Message from the Chief Executive Officer

Corporate Responsibility (CR) is now well accepted in society and it’s rare to find a business that does not support the principle of responsibility. I believe that designing corporate strategy in a responsible way is vital for ongoing commercial success and we therefore integrate CR into our strategy and activities on a daily basis.

Vodafone has a global footprint that spans five continents including Europe, Asia, the US, Africa and Australasia. This ‘window to the world’ allows us to constantly learn, innovate and anticipate key business trends. In our sector, we are focused on numerous opportunities such as emerging markets, mobile internet services and increased data usage. In each case, aligning the commercial opportunity with our CR objectives will form an important part of our success. I would like to highlight how we are practicing this alignment in several areas including rural rollout, the mobile internet and the management of our climate impact.

Bringing telecommunications and internet access to poor or un-connected communities in emerging economies, often in rural areas, improves quality of life and enables participation in economic activity. We invested in these communities as, from a CR perspective, it was the right thing to do and Governments mandated rural rollout as part of our license obligations. However, we often invested more than we were obliged to because we believed these communities also represented commercial opportunities if we designed and tailored our services specifically to their needs. Tailoring that meant smaller top up vouchers, innovative distribution models and the development of low cost handsets. Re-designing many of our services with these customers in mind was commercially viable and they are now helping to deliver like for like revenue growth of approximately 50% in India, 30% in Egypt and 20% in Romania. This is both a commercial and CR win–win.

As a company, growing a business on this scale could potentially have an adverse impact on the climate. So while serving these communities and generating strong revenue growth, we must ensure that there is not a detrimental impact to the environment as a consequence. I believe that we can grow our business while also contributing more favourably to the environment and, importantly, without imposing significant costs or constraints on our operations. We recently announced a new climate change commitment focusing on greener energy and improving our energy efficiency. My view is that when we can protect the environment and improve our company’s efficiency, we are supporting the long-term sustainability of the business.

There are several other areas of our business where we believe it’s especially important to take a responsible approach towards our customer offerings. Mobile data contributed £2.2 billion towards our 2007/ 08 annual revenues. As this segment continues to grow strongly, we ensure that we continue to listen carefully to what our customers are telling us about their internet experiences. Apart from their obvious enthusiasm for accessing the internet via their mobile, customers also want a safe and secure mobile internet experience, particularly for children. Our customers want to be able to protect their children, control who they interact with in social networks and have assurance over the confidentiality of customer data. We have invested in several areas of research to develop our understanding of customer expectations on privacy, mobile advertising and child protection. We are developing a range of solutions to help our customers define their own mobile internet experience and I believe that by rolling out a responsible mobile internet strategy, this will put us at the forefront of customer protection, translating into greater customer trust and, ultimately, preference for our products.

Businesses must have the foresight and flexibility to adapt quickly to developments in their global and local market place. With respect to Vodafone, increasing demand for mobile services in emerging markets, the forces of convergence across the media, telecommunications and internet industries, and global environmental concerns, such as climate change, are all significant issues for our business. I believe that the adoption of CR into our business strategy in these and other areas will enable us to address these challenges more successfully and on a more sustainable basis. By doing so, we will be better able to create value for our business, our customers and our broader stakeholders. Put simply, that is our goal.

I hope you find the CR report useful and informative. Your views are important to us as we look to continually improve our business and its value to all stakeholders.

Arun Sarin
Chief Executive