As you will recall, I was appointed CEO of our Group by the Board of Directors in mid-August. I accepted the post with great enthusiasm and with the firm expectation of enhancing our attention to the important challenges we face. These have been 16 intense weeks, a period of time that has served to confirm my conviction that together we will achieve our goals.

From my first days in office, we developed a plan with strategic lines of action for achieving our corporate objectives. It included, among others, the following actions, implemented with the valuable support of FCC teams:

1. Our People: The first priority is people. In these 16 weeks, I have had the privilege of visiting, meeting and talking with colleagues from our offices in Madrid and Barcelona, our Delegations in Spain, Vienna, Zisterdorf (Austria), Bogota (Colombia). I have also had the pleasure of holding numerous meetings with teams representing all the countries where we operate and with our trade union representatives. I have taken part in the opening of extraordinary building works implemented by FCC.
All these meetings and visits, and sessions with the Board of Directors, have demonstrated to me the high level of our team’s human and technical quality. This is the principal reason why FCC is a world leader in many areas and a Group with an enormous reputation.
2. Corporate Relations: In addition, I have held numerous meetings with government officials (Presidents and Ministers), Mayors, Chairmen of banks, Ambassadors, Directors of business organisations, the media, etc. to inform them of our Group’s lines of strategy.

3. Capital Increase: It is with great satisfaction that I am able to report that on 17 December 2015 (after two months’ intense work), we completed a new and very important Capital Increase for FCC of more than 709 million Euros. These funds confirm our leading shareholders’ commitment and will enable us to reduce debt, to strengthen Cementos Portland, to participate in the increase of Realia share capital, and to dedicate resources to other strategic corporate objectives.

4. Debt: During this period, we have negotiated and achieved an additional 15% relief award on a tranche of our overall debt (tranche B), which implies significant savings and removes hurdles for renegotiating the remaining debt.

5. Divestitures: We are moving forward in the process of divestment and in 2016 will generate revenues that will also contribute to FCC’s growing financial strength.

6. Cost Control: The schemes implemented to control costs, centralise purchasing, progress in eliminating non-essential expenses, rationalise travel, etc. have contributed to significant cost reductions in our operations and made us more competitive.

7. Collections: A key task of the team has been to vigorously drive the collection of receivables and claims from previous years for FCC, from projects both in Spain and the international arena. In the last three months, the funds recovered by FCC Construccion alone amount to 230 million Euros, helping us to meet our financial commitments.

8. New Projects: We have undertaken a re-organisation of various Areas (such as FCC Aqualia, FCC Construccion and FCC Industrial), with the aim of adapting better to the current market and building structures that enable us to implement greater efficiency and exploit synergies. This also allows us to meet the great opportunities that lie before us, particularly in terms of our competitiveness in Infrastructure, Environmental Services (given the global and regional commitments to recycling, sustainable energy generation and addressing climate change) and Water (within the UN’s framework commitment of bringing safe water and sanitation to the entire world population within the next 15 years). In this way, we are already achieving and will continue to achieve growth in our operating income.

These are tangible results that fill us with confidence about how things can be achieved by everyone working with dedication and commitment.

These strategic lines of action and specific measures will continue to have individual meaning for each area, for each administrative unit and, of course, for each of us. We will focus on the sectors, regions and areas that offer the greatest opportunities, avoiding dispersion, and we will work to improve efficiency and quality in our works and projects.

The extensive efforts made by the team will be reflected in the financial results, which have been gradually improving.

All of this should encourage us but it should not be a cause for complacency. Many financial and operational challenges lie ahead. We will continue taking significant measures to achieve the transformation needed to strengthen our Group.
I assure you that we are on the right track. With your support, we will achieve our goals. I am very proud of the team we have at FCC. I ask you to continue giving the best each of you has in favour of the noble causes that unite us and, as I said when I joined FCC, we all have a contribution to make, there are no minor contributors.

I wish you happy holidays over Christmas and the New Year. I hope you will rest and enjoy yourselves and we will return in January with great enthusiasm, with all of our efforts we will achieve a magnificent year for FCC. I also hope that 2016 brings a year of good health, prosperity and success for each of you and your families.

Affectionately
Carlos M. Jarque