Born in Moscow, Russia in the early 1990s with one small project and one member of staff, Sunbury Heights has now grown into four countries, 9 operating entities, pursuing three main areas of business and boasting many of the world’s top corporations as clients.

Reflecting on the achievements of the past 5 years and the lessons learned during that period - the strains that come from rapid growth, the financial challenges posed by continual re-investment and renewal, the human resource challenges prompted by demanding clients and a growing client base - helps us chart a course for the next 5-10 years.

The benefits we have gained from operating in high-growth developing markets are not unalloyed by risk. In the developing markets in which we operate, none has seen more than 10 years stability and political and economic predictability is non-existent.

Similarly, our growth into the more developed markets of Western Europe has seen us face, for the first time, strong and focussed competition which has served to sharpen our skills. The client relationships formed in the developing markets of Russia and the Ukraine have eased our entry into those mature markets, but growth there is hard-won, with none of the market escalators so prevalent in Eastern Europe.

Our entry into the market in the United Arab Emirates, with the opening of our Dubai office and early projects there for, amongst others, McKinsey, have helped us broaden our appeal while spreading risk beyond the less stable locations in which we operate.

The volatility of the emerging markets and the rather more stable but slower growth in mature markets have prompted us to maintain a lean, low fixed overhead structure, maximising flexibility while ensuring we have the best specialists in-house.

As the company has grown, we are proud to have honed our mission and corporate strategy around the objectives detailed in the following pages. We have also been determined to build a loyal and skilled workforce, and to prioritise the continuing education of our staff as well as ensuring that all staff share in the benefits of the Group’s growth.

We have developed a corporate structure well suited to the specific business requirements of the particular markets in which we operate. Our holding company, Sunbury Heights Holdings, is becoming our main vehicle for all our international business and we estimate that the share of our total business routed through wholly-owned SHH businesses will grow to over 90% in the coming 18 months.

The Sunbury Heights Group public profile continues to grow and we are regularly in demand to speak at industry conferences and to contribute articles to relevant journals. Our quarterly construction cost bulletins and annual Gold Standard Vendor Award events have similarly raised our public profile and helped establish a thought-leadership position for the Group.

Group company Smith & Conquest has successfully recruited some of the brightest minds in European procurement, offering added value procurement consulting propositions to our core client base, but specifically focusing on international clients operating outside their home markets.

During the last months of 2008 we also upgraded our client project extranet, which extends our online management facilities and provides considerable extra functionality to project specialists.

Our recently launched PMWeb initiative was designed to bring the best independent project managers into the Sunbury Heights fold, while breaking the link between dynamic growth and inflexible overhead levels. We expect much of our international growth over the next 3-5 years to come via this initiative.

Due to staff initiatives, we continue to contribute to the societies in which we operate, including helping rebuild an orphanage in Russia as well as sponsoring numerous charity and social events. We have also supported micro-finance initiatives in the developing world and will continue to invest charitably in this direction.

Our corporate rebranding exercise at the end of the year enabled us to review all our standards and procedures in a new light and improve them where necessary. These and other initiatives will continue as we enter the next stage of our growth, aggressively pursuing excellence in the areas in which we work and expanding geographically into carefully chosen high-growth locations.

Despite the general economic downturn I am confident that our value-driven propositions will continue to gain traction in our core markets.