Hotwire has signed a contract to represent the Security Division of Thales in the UK after an 18-month relationship with one of the Thales business lines. Thales, formerly Thomson-CSF, is today a global electronics company in the security, services, aerospace and defence markets with €10.6 billion in revenues in 2003. The company bought Racal Electronics in a £1.3 billion deal in 2000 and through a series of high profile contracts has become a major player in the defence industry in the UK. Hotwire's brief is to position and communicate Thales' credentials in the civil security markets in the UK.

To cater for the growing adoption of current and next generation mobile phones worldwide there is a need for a standardised platform for base stations. To cater for this need the major vendors in the mobile technology industry have formed OBSAI (Open Base Station Architecture Initiative), an industry organisation created to establish an open and more effective market for base station development. OBSAI has appointed Hotwire to drive an international PR campaign to increase awareness of the association and its work. www.obsai.org

It has been a busy year at Hotwire. Today, at the end of 2004, we have a team of nearly fifty PR professionals, a group of amazing clients, won awards for our client campaigns and have three offices across Europe. Adding new talent is vital and Hotwire has just completed a major recruitment drive to hire the best new PR talent in Europe. The selection process, which includes at least five hours of interviews and extensive competency testing, resulted in seven emerging PR specialists joining Hotwire across our offices in France, Germany and the UK.

In-car navigation technology is the latest consumer electronics purchase and pundits are betting that it's high on the Christmas gift list of drivers across Europe. In the last few weeks, Hotwire has signed two new contracts in the in-car navigation space. Hotwire's London office has won ALK, makers of the CoPilot Live GPS navigation software for PDAs and phones. Hotwire's team in France has started to work with Navigon, the company behind MobileNavigator4 navigation software.

Hotwire has signed up with ObjectStar, the specialist in real-time, integrated customer information. Hotwire and brand specialists Thinkfarm have been appointed to position the company in the rapidly growing customer data integration space.