The Mannion era at Aer Lingus

Dermot Mannion succeeded Willie Walsh as chief executive of Aer Lingus on 8 August 2005.  he departed the company on 6 April 2009.  Mannion’s tenure was marked by the privatisation of the company.  The former chief financial officer, Seán Coyle was recruited on 22 August 2008 and departed on 31 December 2009

Ryanair owns 29.82% of the equity; the State owns 25.11% and 12.47% of the equity is owned by employee share ownership participation.  This leaves 32.6% of the equity in more dispersed ownership

Year	Group Profit / (Loss) €	Mannion’s Remuneration €	Coyle’s Remuneration €
2005	100,047,000	206,000
2006	-79,368,000	982,000
2007	105,265,000	1,115,000
2008	-109,882,000	652,000	187,000
2009	-130,081,000	764,000	875,000
TOTAL	€-114,019,000	€3,719,000	€1,062,000
Days’ Service	1,337	496

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Mueller arrives to transform Aer Lingus into what it has been

CHRISTOPH MUELLER took on the role of chief executive of Aer Lingus at the beginning of the month with a mandate to “transform Aer Lingus from a legacy Irish business to a modern international airline”.  The Irish Times reported on 10th September that Mueller is to be paid a basic salary of €475,000 – in line with the pay of his predecessor, Dermot Mannion and that he will not be paid a bonus.  His remuneration package is said to be in line with that offered by similarly-sized Irish listed companies”

Success for Mueller is the recovery of the 2006 IPO share price within five years.

‘Trust but Verify’

I always find it instructive to adopt the Ronald Reagan adage ‘trust but verify’ when considering statements by Aer Lingus.  Reagan used the adage as US-Soviet relations were thawing in the 1980’s.

All has to be considered in the context of the real beneficiaries of the 2006 IPO.  They are the former chief executive, Dermot Mannion; the non-executive directors whose fees trebled and the professional advisors who obtained €30 million in fee income in respect of the IPO and €24 million in respect of the Aer Lingus response to the two Ryanair bids.  There have been no dividends.  The share price has collapsed.  The pilots’ pension fund has been severely depleted through its Aer Lingus investment.

‘Basic Salary – No Bonus’

Mannion joined Aer Lingus in August 2006.  He departed in April 2009.  Cumulative losses at the airline  during his tenure were €72.4 million.  Cumulative losses since 2006 increased to €165.4 by the end of June 2009.

Mannion’s pay record has been:

2006	€982,000
2007	€1,115,000
2008	€652,000
TOTAL	€2,749,000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mueller’s salary is not  therefore in line with that of his predecessor. Greencore Plc, with a market capitalisation of €323 million,  is the nearest public company, in terms of market capitalisation, to Aer Lingus, which has a market capitalisation of €393 million – even though its cash resources apparently exceed this sum significantly.  The 2008 annual report reports the remuneration of its former chief executive, David J Dilger as being €1,095,000 in 2008 and €1,447,000 in 2007. 

 

Gesture of Confidence

 

Aer Lingus shares were priced at €0.52 on his Mueller’s first day at the helm of Aer Lingus.  They were worth €1.43 the day the person who hired him, Colm Barrington, became Chairman on 1 October 2008 so the stock market has not been enthusiastic about Barrington.

 

To demonstrate their confidence in the future of Aer Lingus, Barrington made his first-ever equity purchase when splurged €0.51 per share on 60,000 shares on 28 August. 

 

Mueller spent €29,275.70 on 50,000 Aer Lingus ordinary shares on 8 September.  That is equivalent to 6% of his annual salary, the same amount as his income tax levy.

 

His predecessor, Mannion, owned 18,988 shares, including an allocation of 9,803 shares under the Employee Share Ownership Plan.

 

Crystal Ball Gazing

 

Barrington issued a letter to Aer Lingus shareholders on 22 December 2008 advocating rejection of the 2nd Ryanair bid and he stated categorically then that “Aer Lingus is and will be profitable” and that it had cash resources in excess of €800 million.  When the results for 2008 were published Aer Lingus reported a loss of €107.8 million and €653 million.

 

Barrington was interviewed on the RTE Radio 1 This Week programme on Sunday 17 May and he rubbished claims by Michael O’Leary that Aer Lingus would run out of cash in 18 months (at the end of 2010).  He also said that Ryanair would be reporting losses but omitted to mention that if that was the case, the collapse in the Aer Lingus share price would account for a €220 million impairment charge as a consequence of the 71% fall in the value of Ryanair’s shareholding in Aer Lingus since Barrington became Chairman last October.  Five weeks after this interview the ‘legacy Irish business that is to be transformed into a modern international airline’ returned an operating loss of €93 million on revenues of €555 million – 12% lower than the previous June.

 

It would appear that the crystal ball can become a bit foggy from time to time.  But the one gesture that really undermined my respect for Barrington was the grovelling eulogy to the former senior independent director of Aer Lingus, Sean FitzPatrick, the disgraced former Chairman of Anglo Irish Bank - “in December 2008, Sean FitzPatrick resigned from the Board.  Sean served Aer Lingus extremely well and had a significant and positive influence on the company both before and after the IPO”.  Given that he was speaking of a eunuch that has utterly violated public trust and virtually bankrupted Ireland and that the Irish taxpayers own 25% of Aer Lingus, it might have been more appropriate to have said that “he has served on the Board but has departed”.  But he didn’t have the backbone to do that.

 

Incidentally, Ned Sullivan, Chairman of Greencore Plc was a director of Anglo Irish Bank from November 2001. He was also a member of the Risk and Compliance Committee at Anglo. Coincidentally, FitzPatrick was a director of Greencore from January 2003 until he had to also abruptly resign from that board in December 2008.  Sullivan, in his Chairman's Statement in the 2008 Greencore Annual Report opines “Sean had been a key contributor to the Board for six years during a period of significant change for the Group.  The Board would like to thank Sean sincerely for his valued input and wise counsel which has contributed greatly to the growth and development of the Group during that period”.  These sentiments provide a vivid insight into the umbilical relationship between the cute whore and the bucolic peasant.  There is no base threshold to which these self-aggrandising sycophants will not grovel.

 

FitzPatrick’s successor as senior independent director is a 72 year old ‘who has been everything’, including a pre-2008 director of the Bank of Ireland, the bank that was prepared to fund ‘Dubai-on-the-Dodder’, if that were to act as a bonus steroid for its leadership – is that the correct noun?

 

Non-Executive Directors Fees

 

The Secretary-General of the Department of Transport wrote to Barrington on the instructions of the Minister on 4 June concerning directors’ fees in advance of the AGM on 5 June and requested a review of these.

 

It is not clear if Barrington has sent an SMS text to these directors about this ‘legacy issue’ as promptly as he sent an SMS text to 63 contact  cabin crew last week to advice them they no longer have a job. 

 

I hope that the newly appointed Chief Executive of Aer Lingus succeeds.  Apart from the prevailing economic adversity, perhaps a bigger impediment to progress it contending with the embedded culture of a country club, the cute whore, the sycophant and the bucolic peasant.  Not even the gaudiest and most expensively produced  annual report can conceal the odious viral effect of that.

 

 

Overseas travel to and from Ireland implodes

The trend in May 2009 of overseas travel into and out of Ireland has dropped by 18.4% in May reflecting weaknesses throughout the economy. Irish residents made 610,000 overseas trips in May – a drop of 10% in 12 months.

The following table summarise current trends:

 

(000)’s	Irish trips overseas	Trips to Ireland	from GB	from Europe	from North America	from other places
Jan-May 2008	3,045	2,951	1,547.6	959.6	335.6	109.9
Jan-May 2009	2,729.4	2,667.5	1,320.	927.3	325.3	94.7
Decline	-10.3%	-9.6%	-14.7%	-3.3%	-3.0%	-13%

 

Aer Lingus is suffering a severe downturn in its transatlantic passenger traffic with passenger numbers in the first 6 months of 2009 down by 14.2% from 613,000 last year to 526,000 this year.  This has translated into an even more severe impact on revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) which has dropped by 17.7% in the case of its long-haul business from 3,487,000,000 to 2,871,000,000.

The latest passenger traffic data from Ryanair relates to May 2009 – even though Ryanair promises to publish monthly passenger trafiic data within 5 working days of the end of each month.  Today is Wednesday, 15 July.  The May figures show passenger numbers increasing to an annualised 59,573,427 from 52,464,692 in May 2008.  Ryanair increased in load factor in May 2009 from 80% to 81%.  This compares to an overall load factor at Aer Lingus of 74% for the first six months of 2009, up 1.2% – attributable to its short-haul business.

‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’

The board of Anglo Irish Bank that created the debacle that led to its nationalisation, – chronic losses, impaired directors’ loans and the elimination of its equity, contains an interesting set of mutually beneficial relationships.  What is particularly noteworthy is the cosy, intimate nature of these relationships is that they are seemingly blind to the most appalling violation of public trust committed by Sean FitzPatrick, the former chairman of Anglo until he resigned, in disgrace, from all board positions on 18 December 2008.  But the unctuous tributes would make a casual observer believe that a saint was being celebrated, not a flamboyant spiv who has destroyed the reputation of a proud nation.

He disclosed that he he concealed tens of millions of € at Irish Nationwide Building Society to conceal the existence of personal borrowing from Anglo Irish Bank from the contents of the Bank’s annual report and he also inveigled Bowler’s Irish Life & Permanent Plc to deposit €7.5 billion at the end of September 2008 in Anglo to appear to boost the deposit base of the Bank.  The Tier 1 capital at Bowler’s bank was a mere €4 billion and, coo, shucks, she didn’t know nothing about this deposit beforehand, notwithstanding that her fellow director, Danuta Grey, was a contemporaneous director of Aer Lingus with, guess who – FitzPatrick. 

 

Greencore Plc

                               FtizPatrick became a director of Greencore Plc on 1 January 2003 and the Chairman of Greencore, Ned Sullivan, was a non-executive director of Anglo since 12 November 2001. 

The following summarises the fees’ aspect of this episode of mutual back-scratching:

 

	Sullivan’s fees at Anglo Irish Bank €	FitzPatrick’s fees at Greencore Plc €
2002	42,000
2003	70,000	30,000
2004	74,000	43,000
2005	75,000	45,000
2006	93,000	48,000
2007	108,000	48,000
2008	147,000	51,000
TOTAL	€609,000	€265,000

 

Sullivan was a member of the 3-person Risk an Compliance Committee at Anglo in 2008.  This Committee would have risk evaluated directors’ loans amounting to €175 million, of which €31 million are impaired since nationalisation and approved loans to property interests that account for losses of over €4 billion in the half-year to 31 March 2009 and the moral hazard associated with this.

Sullivan, in his chairman’s statement in the 2008 annual report of Greencore Plc eulogises FitzPatrick, as follows:

“In December 2008, Sean FitzPatrick resigned from the Board.  Sean has been a key contributor to the Board for six years during a period of significant change for the Group.  The Board would like to thank Sean sincerely for his valued input and wise counsel which has contributed greatly to the growth and development of the Group during that period".”

Greencore Plc YE: September 26	2003 – €(000)’s	2008 €(000)’s
Sales	1,448,996	1,308,097
Profit after tax	57,655	46,152
Share price	€2.70 (31 Dec 2002)	€0.95 (18 Dec 2008)

 

Smurfit Kappa Plc

Gary McGann, chief executive of Smurfit Kappa had been a director of Anglo Irish Bank since January 2004 and FitzPatrick joined the board of Smurfit Kappa on 20 March 2007.  The following summarises the fee trawl:

 

	McGann’s fees at Anglo Irish Bank €	FitzPatrick’s fees at Smurfit Kappa €
2004	43,000
2005	65,000
2006	72,000
2007	92,000	250,000
2008	124,000	300,000
TOTAL	€396,000	€550,000

 

At 30 September 2008 Sullivan owned 440,084 ordinary shares in Anglo Irish Bank and McGann owned 5,900 ordinary shares.  McGann was a member of the Audit and Remuneration Committees.

The Chairman of Smurfit Kappa is Liam O’Mahony former boss of CRH Plc, and in his statement in the 2008 annual report about FitzPatrick was “I would like to thank all of the Directors for their contribution to the development and effectiveness of the Board and its various Committees.”  The Remuneration Report formally noted that FitzPatrick resigned from the Board in December 2008.  Is this not a perfectly dignified and appropriate way to deal with this matter!  No empty platitudes, no peasant cunning! 

 

Aer Lingus Plc

FitzPatrick was appointed to the board of Aer Lingus in 2004 when it was a state enterprise.  He received a fee of €13,000 in 2005 and €18,000 in 2006.  The airline became a public company in September 2006.  Non executive directors’ fees at Aer Lingus were tripled from €18,000 to €45,000 immediately following the IPO.

Colm Barrington, Chairman of Aer Lingus, in his statement in the 2008 annual report would almost fill a spinnaker with the effusiveness of his eulogy of FitzPatrick “In 2008 Sean FitzPatrick resigned from the Board.  Sean served Aer Lingus extremely well and had a significant and positive influence on the company both before and after the IPO.”  Of course, given a share price of €0.59!  Fees paid to professional advisors in connection with and subsequent to the IPO at Aer Lingus were close to €60 million.  The cumulative loss recorded since the IPO is €72 million.  Enchanting!

Can Aer Lingus really prosper as low-cost,low fare airline?

I listened with great curiosity to a radio interview last Sunday with the Chairman of Aer Lingus, Colm Barrington, on the RTE Radio 1 programme, This Week. His primary goal was to categorically refute suggestions that Aer Lingus would go bust, or run out of cash, within 18 months. But he also presented a picture of a business in retreat, shedding capacity, coping with dramatically reduced revenue and lower passenger numbers.

A reduction in capacity of 9% ad the return of aircraft to lessors would seem to directly contradict the fundamental purpose of the 2006 IPO. It also raises very basic concerns as to whether Aer Lingus can ever be a leading, profitable, low-fare, low-cost airline on the basis of its cost structure, its business culture and stakeholder sentiment.

He indicated on Sunday that operating losses in 2009 would surpass those of 2008. But it was not clear if you meant that these would exceed €17.65 million reported last year or €96.28 million which was the reversal from the operating profit of 2007.

He also stated in a letter, dated 22 December 2008, to shareholders advocating rejection of the second Ryanair bid ‘that Aer Lingus is and will be profitable and that it had cash resources in excess of €800 million’. Perhaps the operating losses and the reduction in net cash accrue in the last 8 days of December and the remarks in your letter factually correct when it was written, but the defence cost Aer Lingus €5.84 million and shareholders would hope that it had been mounted on a foundation other than delusion and fantasy?

Aer Lingus wishes to be a leading low-cost, low fare airline so it is interesting to compare it with the current leader, Ryanair.

Cost Structure and Scale of Operations

A comparison between Aer Lingus and Ryanair:

	2007	2008
Ryanair average fare	€45.91	€43.00
Aer Lingus average fare, short-haul	€93.96	€87.97
Ryanair – number employed	3,991	5,262
Aer Lingus – number employed	3,905	4,035
Ryanair: ratio of employees to passengers	10,648	9,673
Aer Lingus: ratio of employees to passengers	2,400	2,478
Aer Lingus: average pay	€78,700	€82,250
Ryanair: average pay	€56,772	€54,227
Ryanair 2008 revenue (9 months to 31 Dec)		+11%
Aer Lingus revenue 2008 (12 months)		+2.4%
Ryanair passenger volume (9 months to 31 Dec)		+17%
Aer Lingus passenger volume		+7.4%
Ryanair fleet		183 aircraft – to be increased by 12 Boeing 737-800
Aer Lingus fleet		42 aircraft to be reduced by 9%

He stated in the interview, quoting Morgan Stanley, that Ryanair is likely to return a loss of €76.5 million in the year ended 31 March 2009. But he neglected to mention that if a loss arises it would be after taking account of an impairment charge of €220 million as a consequence of the 71% collapse in the value of its 29.3% shareholding in Aer Lingus since 31 March 2008.

Business Culture

Chief Executive’s emoluments

The immediate beneficiaries of the IPO were the professional advisors who pocketed €30 million, the chief executive whose emoluments increased from €530,000 paid to Willie Walsh (now Chief Executive at BA) in 2005 to €982,000 paid to Dermot Mannion in 2006 when the business made a loss of €69.926 million and the fees paid non-executive directors.

Mannion’s total remuneration during his tenure at Aer Lingus was €2.9 million and the cumulative loss in that period was €72 million. The emoluments of Michael O’Leary in 2007 and 2008 were €2.21 million but Ryanair earned a profit of €1,008.8 million.

Non-executive directors

Annual fees paid to non-executive directors increased from €18,000 to €45,000 immediately after the IPO to attend up to 20 board and committee meetings in a year. It would appear that quite a few of the non-executive directors did not bring any personal experience of the aviation industry to Aer Lingus.

Barrington refers to Seán FitzPatrick, the former senior independent director in glowing superlatives. He advise that “served Aer Lingus extremely well and had a significant and positive influence on the company both before and after the IPO” The public may not share his Barrington’s exuberance given that FitzPatrick’s abrupt departure from the boardroom at Aer Lingus coincided with an unprecedented violation of public trust that the Garda Fraud Squad and the Director of Corporate Affairs are investigating. The economic blight that has descended on Ireland is at least partially attributable to the downfall and nationalisation of FitzPatrick’s Anglo Irish Bank a consequence of which is a 16% drop in revenue this year at Aer Lingus.

Annual Report

The annual reports of Aer Lingus are as colourful and elaborate as the cosmetic counter in Harrod’s. The 2008 issue is adorned with elaborate graphics, photographs of the great and the good and superlatives about Aer Lingus and corporate social responsibility. There are comments by anonymous customers in full-page settings. “Aer Lingus, very nice staff. On time. Classy. They are very clean…” reminded me of an excerpt I would expect from the script of an edition of the television sitcom Are Your Being Served?

But does a publication of such supreme artistic merit really define Aer Lingus as being leading, low-cost and offering low-fares?

The annual report of Ryanair is plain vanilla, with no photographs, no clichés, and no personal comments from strangers’ about staff hygiene but plenty of data.

Stakeholder Sentiment

Colm Barrington became a director of Aer Lingus on 19^th September 2008 and Chairman on 3^rd October and have been acting chief executive since 6 April 2009 following the departure of Dermot Mannion. The performance of Aer Lingus shares since he took over, compared to that of several other airlines is summarised below:

	Symbol	3 Oct 2008	18 May 2009	Change	% Change
BA	BAY.L	£1.65	£1.58	-£0.07	-4.2%
Lufthansa	LHA.DE	€12.93	€9.19	-€3.74	-28.9%
Qantas	QAN.F	€1.68	€1.04	-€0.64	-38.1%
Air France-KLM	AF.PA	€15.07	€9.57	-€5.50	-36.5%
Ryanair	RY4B.IR	€2.27	€3.33	+€1.06	+46.3%
Aer Lingus	AER.L	€1.39	€0.60	-€0.79	-56.9%

The market capitalisation of Aer Lingus is now €320 million despite the net cash of €600 million.

The market capitalisation of Ryanair is €4.86 billion Its passenger throughout in 2001, a relatively short 8 years ago, was similar to that of Aer Lingus currently.

Michael O’Leary

He has impish tendency of Michael as a self-publicist and his bluster can be tiresome at times. However, nobody can accuse him of lack of business focus.

He joined 3-year old Ryanair as a director in 1988 when he was 26 years of age. Ryanair flew 592,000 passengers and employed 379 persons that year.

When Michael became Chief Executive in 1994 Ryanair flew 1,666,000 passengers and employed 523 persons.

When Ryanair achieved the same passenger throughput in 2001 that Aer Lingus currently has, it employed 1,467 persons.

He owned 65,000,016 shares in Ryanair on 30 June 2008.

Aer Lingus and Ryanair share one feature in common. Neither has declared a dividend. Ryanair uses its retained earnings of close to €2 billion to develop and resource the business which is now flying 51 million passengers. The equity of Aer Lingus is being eroded by losses and the resources provided by the IPO are not being used from now on to augment capacity and expand the business.

Is Aer Lingus doomed or just chronically delusional?

AT one stage in Ireland, Aer Lingus, telecom company Éircom and the Catholic Church were considered to be of ‘systemic importance’.

But nowadays the importance of each is not as systemic and the record of Aer Lingus and Éircom, as public companies, has been a disaster as far as meeting expectations are concerned! The mainstream status of the Catholic Church has been hobbled by a plague of clerical paedophilia stretching back through living memory which were responded to wholly inadequately at the time.

If your business is in the process of losing over €107 million how wisely would you spend €5.8 million? Colm Barrington was appointed chairman of Aer Lingus last October. When Ryanair launched a bid for Aer Lingus last December Barrington spent this amount defending the bid. He wrote to Aer Lingus shareholder on 22 December 2008 urging them to reject the Ryanair offer – which was based on a cash offer of €1.40 per share for the 25% stake owned by the Irish Government. This valued Aer Lingus at €748 million as recently as last December.

Barrington’s letter stated:

· That Aer Lingus (on 22 Dec) is and will be a profitable business.

· Aer Lingus has (22 Dec) unmatched financial strength - net cash of €803 million

· Aer Lingus has a clear strategy for profitable growth

· That the board of Aer Lingus has delivered on its promises and has a vibrant independent future

Less than 80 days later, on 11 March 2009, Aer Lingus published its 2008 full-year results. These revealed a loss of €107.8 million and net cash of €653.9 million. But this is after burning €340 million last year.

The Government rejected the Ryanair offer in January. The shares in Aer Lingus currently trade at €0.59 and its market capitalisation is €315 million, equivalent to 97% of the 2008 payroll of €334 million. The €635.9 million cash that Aer Lingus claims is clearly not unencumbered in the view of the market makers and the cash drain

What value was obtained for the tissue of fantasy that the €5.8 million spent on defending this bid when the ultimate decision was essentially based on politics?

Ryanair also made an offer for Aer Lingus in November 2006, shortly after the Aer Lingus IPO based on a price per share of €2.80 but this was rules out by the European Commission on grounds that it would create a near-monopoly. Aer Lingus spent close to €25 million defending this unsolicited offer, arguing in 2006 that it has “excellent prospects as an independent company; a compelling customer proposition which competes successfully with Ryanair and a clear strategy to grow profitably with a 15% per annum return on capital”.

Aer Lingus has had a patchy history. Turnover in 2008 of €1.35 billion is similar to turnover of €1.32 billion in 2001, although the business mix is different. The airline flew 6.3 million passengers in 2001 and 10 million in 2008 having added to its aircraft capacity.

An IPO in September 2006 yielded €400 million and a further €104 million to augment a pension fund. But losses of almost €70 million were incurred in 2006 and when the losses of 2008 are taken into account, Aer Lingus has made a cumulative loss of €72 million since the IPO.

Ryanair claims that Aer Lingus is condemned to a future constrained by losses, sub-optimum scale, regional airline and declining traffic with a high cost base. Aer Lingus speak of “exceptionally challenging trading conditions, falling consumer demand and a weakening outlook for the dollar and pound sterling”.

Aer Lingus has a labour force of over 6,800 in 2001. It spent in the region of €300 million bringing this number down to fewer than 4,000 and is to spend a further €52 million from April 2009 on further streamlining. This had the effect of increasing the staff-passenger ratio from 923 in 2001 to almost 2,400 in 2007.

While job numbers were culled directors’ emoluments were not. Fees paid to non-executive directors, who are obliged to attend a handful of meetings, were increased from €18,000 to €45,000 in 2007. The remuneration package of Dermot Mannion, chief executive of Aer Lingus, since August 2005, increased from €530,000 to €1,115,000 in 2007 but was pared to €652,000 last year . His predecessor at Aer Lingus and current chief executive of British Airways, Willie Walsh, earned a comparable package in for running an airline with a turnover of £7.5 billion and profits of £694 million, after tax.

One of the consequences of the job cull is that the 25% shareholder, the Irish Government, is collecting €10 million less in social insurance and pro-rata less income taxes.

Ryanair has the ambition to become one of the Big-4 European airlines. The rate of airline closure and consolidation in the European airline industry has been accelerating. Air France / KLM has taken a 25% stake in Alitalia and the Lithuanian airline FlyLAL is bankrupt. Ryanair’s market capitalisation is currently €4.88 billion – comparable to Lufthansa and Delta Airlines but significantly higher than British Airways. It returned a Q3 (31 December 2008) loss of €106 million attributable to higher fuel costs in 2008. Ryanair carries more passengers in a single month than Aer Lingus do in a year.

The former chairman of Aer Lingus, John Sharman left this position last October. The guiding hand and wisdom of Seán FitzPatrick disappeared last December when it was disclosed that he concealed personal loan transactions at Anglo Irish Bank, which he founded, from its shareholders. Mannion left more recently. A reformed management team has been announced whose mission has been formed, whose role is to do what the 2006 defence document highlighted – to deliver value!