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TWST: Can we start with a brief historical sketch of EDB and then just bring us up to date with where the company is today?

Mr. Trondsen: We are a Norwegian based company with around 3,200 employees and NOK 5 billion revenue in the last year. The company has both a very long and a very short story. The short history derives from the fact that we became a public company three years ago as a result of mergers with several Norwegian companies. At that time, we decided to create a Norwegian company with a focus on outsourcing software and services to the banking and the telco industry. There is also a general consultancy services aspect to the business, which comprises 14% of our revenue, where we sell professional services to the telco industry. We started out three years ago with some NOK 2 billion in revenue and with a goal of reaching NOK 5 billion in 2001 that was achieved through M&A activity. For the next three years, our goal is to double the revenue, again mainly based on M&A because the organic growth opportunity in this market is low. Even with a normal growth of 10-15%, we would not make more then NOK 6½ billion over this period anyway, so we need a growth strategy that is built on mergers. When we started the Company, we also decided that we should focus on business areas where we would be the dominant player in the Norwegian market – you have to take into account that Norway is a small country with only 5½ million people – and then, once we were positioned as the dominant player we would then embark on international expansion. So far we have an interest in the US, selling mediation products to the telco sector. We also have some 250 people in Sweden and have just started operations in Poland, the UK, and have offices in Switzerland and Spain. After close to one year of international expansion we are slightly behind our target, the reason being simply that the telco sector has been fairly weak over the last 6-10 months and that has inevitably restricted our growth. However, we are more or less on track with our growth expectation and we are still focusing on what we are best at, which is providing solutions for banking, telco and outsourcing. Today we are seeing that the general consultancy market is extremely weak and there are not many signs of that market moving in a positive direction, at least not over a three to five month period. That is a general trend in Europe and, even though we are in Norway where the economy is excellent (we have an oil-based and dollar-based economy), you can see that the psychology in the IT sector has widened and there is a tendency among investors to be very hesitant and reluctant to invest. They are looking to the rest of the world waiting to see what will happen.