Paris, January 9, 2008 – JCDecaux SA (Euronext Paris: DEC), the No.1 outdoor advertising company in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region, and No.2 worldwide, announces that MCDecaux (a joint venture between JCDecaux SA and Mitsubishi Corporation, in which JCDecaux owns a 60% interest), has won three new contracts.
- These 20-year contracts concern the cities of:
- - Kawasaki, 9th largest Japanese city with 1.3 million inhabitants (contract signed with a private bus operator),
- - Sendai, 12th largest city with 1 million inhabitants, one of the principal Japanese advertising markets (contract signed with the city authorities),
- - Sagamihara, 19th largest Japanese city with 0.7 million inhabitants (contract signed with a private bus operator).
- MCDecaux has won contracts with sixteen of the twenty largest cities in Japan, and thirty in the top 50, representing a potential audience of 28.5 million inhabitants. Over the next five years, these contracts will enable MCDecaux to provide a potential 3,500 bus shelters and 7,000 advertising panels. MCDecaux’s continued development in Japan’s urban areas, follows a positive response from the public to Cityscape, the local bus shelter network launched in 2004.
- In 1999, MCDecaux became the first international outdoor advertising company to enter the Japanese market. Providing high-quality and innovative bus shelters, MCDecaux is currently working with the Japanese designer GK Sekkei to trial bus shelters with roofs covered by grass. Thanks to lightweight sheets of artificial grass containing seeds that require no watering, the bus shelter roofs remain green at all times.
- In addition to a modest environmental contribution through a reduction of CO2 , this innovation responds to the public’s desire for a greener urban environment.
Jean-Charles Decaux, co-CEO of JCDecaux, said: “These important contracts with sixteen of the twenty largest cities in Japan underlines MCDecaux’s unique ability to offer advertisers and their advertising agencies a nationwide coverage in cities and in shopping centres. MCDecaux is the leading bus shelter advertising company in Japan, a strategically important position as Japan is the 2nd largest advertising market in the world, worth about €39 billion every year, of which 11.5% is spent on outdoor advertising. This dynamic development in the Japanese market strengthens JCDecaux’s position as the No.1 street furniture advertising provider worldwide.”