HYDG.L Regulatory News (HYDG)

8 Jan 2007 07:00

Hydrogen Group PLC08 January 2007 8 January 2007 HYDROGEN GROUP PLC Trading Update Hydrogen Group Plc ("Hydrogen" or "the Group") one of the UK's fastest growingspecialist recruitment consultancies, which listed on AIM on 29th September2006, is issuing a trading update following the end of its financial year to31st December 2006. The Board is pleased to announce that it enjoyed a strong final quarter and thatperformance for the year has matched its expectations. Good growth was generatedacross the Group's brands, in particular in the financial, technology, legal,sales and human resource disciplines. Hydrogen's development continues to be driven by the Group's leading marketpositions in the mid to senior level professional segments of its targetmarkets, where it sees continued opportunities for strong organic growth. The Group continues to supplement its growth by evaluating opportunities inrelated markets through its proven incubator approach to developing new brands.In addition, its dedicated team placing overseas candidates is achieving goodmomentum and the Board is identifying opportunities to build on this success. Ian Temple, Executive Chairman, commented: "We are making good progress in implementing our proven strategy which weoutlined at the time of our listing on AIM. The underlying growth drivers of ourbusiness are robust, partly driven by legislation and regulatory change such asMiFID*. As a result, we look forward to the current year with confidence." Enquiries: Hydrogen Group Plc 020 7240 2500 Ian Temple, Executive Chairman Hudson Sandler 020 7796 4133 Andrew Hayes Kate Hough NOTES TO EDITORS: Introduction Hydrogen is a specialist recruitment consultancy, focused on mid to seniorprofessional talent hires to financial services and commerce and industry. TheGroup has eight niche consultancies being Project Partners, Commerce Partners,Target Partners, Finance Professionals, Audit Professionals, Law Professionals,HR Professionals specialising in recruitment within their disciplines andReflect, a human resources outsourcing consultancy. The Group services a wide range of blue chip and smaller corporate clients,including UBS, the BBC, BNP Paribas and Carphone Warehouse. History Hydrogen was formed in November 2005 when PRO (established 1997) and PartnersGroup (established 2000) were acquired and formally brought together by theexisting management teams, to give greater critical mass and a platform tomaximise the opportunities in the recruitment market place. Both businesses havewon numerous awards, individually being listed in the Sunday Times VirginAtlantic Fast Track 100. *MiFID MiFID is part of an EU plan to create a single market in financial services. Thenew rules will apply to all regulated markets and companies that provideinvestment services to third parties. "Implementing measures" for MiFID must be adopted by January 2007 and MiFID willtake effect on 1st November 2007. Accenture predicts each top-tier investmentbank will have to spend from £19 million for bare minimum MiFID compliance tomore than £50 million to prepare for the new business opportunities Through MiFIDjobs.com, Hydrogen is the market leader dedicated to deliveringhigh calibre professionals to support implementation of this Directive. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange