At a total of €2,210 million as at December 2007, capital expenditure (capex) was higher than in the previous year, as illustrated by the adjacent diagram. €1,860 million of this figure related to investments in property, plant and equipment, and €350 million to investments in intangible assets (not including goodwill). The expenditure in property, plant and equipment was mainly allocated to advanced payments and tangible assets under development (€349 million), to machinery and equipment (€346 million), transport equipment (€277 million), land and buildings (€263 million) and to IT equipment (€243 million).

To allow for a like-for-like comparison with the 2006 Group’s depreciation of assets, the impairment loss in the EXPRESS business in the Americas region of €594 million is to be considered as a one-time effect lowering the total depreciation of assets figure of €2,357 million to €1,763 million. Thus the respective capex versus depreciation ratio for the EXPRESS Division would improve to 1.64 and for the Group to 1.25, figures clearly indicating a significant amount of investments being allocated to the expansion of the Group’s business.