Bowne Business Services was established in fiscal 1996 as a means for Bowne to diversify into non-financial printing businesses, creating a less cyclical revenue stream with the potential to add as much as $250 million by the year 2000. As recently appointed President and COO of BBS, my goal is to assemble the best and the brightest from the industry to make BBS the preeminent provider of document outsourcing solutions to the global business community. Bowne is uniquely positioned to make this a reality, based on its expertise in document management as well as its long-standing customer relationships. In addition, its strong balance sheet makes it possible to pursue strategic acquisitions and attract desirable partners in complementary businesses. UNLIKE TRADITIONAL OUTSOURCING COMPANIES, WE WILL BE THE FIRST IN THE U.S. WITH THE ABILITY TO MANAGE THE ENTIRE LIFE CYCLE OF OUR CUSTOMERS' DOCUMENT OUTSOURCING NEEDS, PROVIDING THE CONVENIENCE OF ONE-STOP SHOPPING. Most of our competitors offer services limited to back-end reprographics and mail room functions. We want to move farther upstream into the front end of our customers' document creation process by also managing their desktop publishing, word processing and multimedia operations. With recent and pending acquisitions, we will also be able to create and manage Internet and intranet sites, as well as to offer comprehensive localization and translation services. What further distinguishes us from our competition is that we can provide our customers greater flexibility by offering these services both onsite at their location and also offsite at BBS regional production centers. To accelerate our entry into this business and satisfy the request of multinational firms for a single worldwide vendor, we recently formed a joint venture with Williams Lea of London. With revenues in excess of $70 million, they are the leading provider of document creation and distribution services to banks, law firms and major corporations in Great Britain, and already offer their clients the one-stop shopping alternative described above. Our joint venture will help multinational institutions create and simultaneously distribute their most important documents to clients and offices worldwide. Additionally, as part of the joint venture agreement, BBS will have access to Williams Lea's expertise and proven methods, which we will use to enhance the development of our business. To expand our reach in the global outsourcing field, we acquired IDOC, Inc., which assists information technology companies such as Microsoft, Novell, IBM and Oracle in the adaptation, translation, reengineering and testing of their products for distribution in international markets. We see sales growth for IDOC in software localization and through cross-selling to financial services sector and Internet customers, for whom localization is increasingly an issue. Bowne Business Services is, in short, off to a strong start. It is integrated into the Bowne network, with a trained staff in place offering outsourcing services today from offices in the United States and abroad. "Some 20% of the largest U.S. companies now use some form of technology outsourcing, says Howard Anderson, president of Yankee Group Research Inc." - Business Week "According to Peter Drucker, in 10 or 15 years, organizations may outsource all work that is 'support' rather than revenue-producing and all activities that do not offer career opportunities into senior management." - The Wall Street Journal "To maintain profit and growth, many companies need to focus on cutting costs and increasing productivity. This often means outsourcing non-core competencies to third parties that can perform a function better, or less expensively, or both. Businesses that help other businesses perform better are well positioned to prosper in the latter part of the nineties." - The Outsourcing Institute's World Wide Web site