Lies, damned lies, statistics … and accounts?
You see these accounts showed that operating profits had grown by 1.487 billion currency units over the 10 years. Pretty impressive, I am sure you will agree. However, during this time – the same 10 years – the accounts showed that the staff costs had decreased by 2.014 billion currency units. That means the staff cost savings were 136% of the increased profits, due largely to average employee numbers being reduced by 110,000 people.