'Exceptionally tough year' for Peterhouse

Peterhouse dived into the red last year to the tune of almost £8m. Executive chairman David Jackson described 2003 as "an exceptionally tough year by any standards".
Jackson's drive to build a FTSE250 support services business has seen a rapid transformation of Peterhouse. His trading moves included the disposal in 2003 of four construction-related businesses seen as non-core.
Financial figures (for the 12 months to 31 December 2003) show a group turnover of £490m, although this tally falls to £410m when discontinued operations are separated out. Peterhouse had a turnover of £450m in the previous year when it logged a pre-tax profit of £15m.
Accounting for the group's losses, Jackson said: "We were affected by reductions in spending by key clients, by increased competition in our Trakway business and by the poor performance of JacksonEve, now combined with First Projects. In addition, Network Rail said in October that it was to take our rail maintenance contracts in Scotland and Manchester in-house."
The knock-on effect of losing the rail maintenance activities is that Peterhouse took an £8.1m hit.
The firm would have made a pre-tax profit of £11m, but delivered a loss of £8m due to £19m of financial charges to cover goodwill and exceptional items.