Risk and the board of directors

The directors are ultimately responsible for the group’s risk management system and for reviewing its effectiveness. The risk management system is designed to manage, rather than eliminate, the risk of failure to achieve business objectives and there is an ongoing process in place for identifying, assessing, managing, monitoring and reporting on the significant risks faced by individual group companies and by the group as a whole. This process has been in place for the year to 31 March 2008.