Etienne de Villiers

On 1 January 2007, the new BBC Charter and Agreement introduced a new governance regime for the BBC's commercial activities. Under this regime, BBC Worldwide and its operating divisions are obliged to comply with four criteria. We must:

• be commercially efficient;
• fit with the BBC's public purpose;
• not jeopardise the good reputation of the BBC or the value of the BBC brand;
• comply with the Fair Trading Policy & Guidelines and not distort the market.

These criteria lie at the heart of our operations as a company, and our five-year strategy revolves around their delivery. The BBC Trust has published a Commercial Protocol, adopted in March 2007, which details how our performance against these criteria is measured. Compliance with these four criteria is assessed by the BBC Worldwide Board, the BBC's Executive Board and Trust.

A formal compliance assessment was completed for the last three months of 2006/07 and the BBC Worldwide Board is confident that we complied with all four criteria. We look forward to reporting on the first full year of compliance in 2007/08, confident that we will meet and surpass these high standards.

We are embarking on our ambitious strategy, designed to deliver double-digit annual growth over the next five years. In order to do this we will aggressively grow revenues overseas, notably in the US and India. We will also be reinforcing our reputation as a major global player across all platforms.

To support these objectives, the coming year will be a year of substantial investment - especially in realising new digital opportunities. At all times we will be prudent to grasp the opportunities with the appropriate amount of risk.

Meanwhile, we are preparing to roll out a series of milestone initiatives, among them the proposed bbc.com portal and our commercial media player. 2007/08 will also see us allying with strategic partners to leverage these initiatives.

Growing our Content & Production business is another key strand in our five-year strategy. The remarkable success of Dancing with the Stars, especially in the US, is a great example of what our team is capable of achieving as it uses the strength of the BBC brand and the enduring popularity of its programmes. The team's performance was matched by Global TV Sales and Global Channels, which both grew ahead of plan.

In order to be the best in a very competitive commercial media environment we need to hire and keep the best people with the right values and skill sets. Much has been done this past year to ensure we are doing this. Much, too, has been done to better understand our audiences as we grow across our many markets and businesses.

I am particularly proud of our Board. It is both dynamic and energetic and has kept its focus firmly on profits; and I have every confidence that we are well placed to sustain our success.

The recent appointment of Thomas Geitner and Simon Clift as independent Non-executives has strengthened an already highly competent and effective group. Our open style of debating and challenging all initiatives and performance will go a long way to not only meeting our strategic objectives, but also ensuring that the BBC Trust is comfortable with and proud of its commercial arm.