Segment analysis

Rebuilding a group's performance business by business from the segment disclosures, over enough years to see the pattern.

The exercise is tedious and is where most of the insight about diversified companies comes from, because it separates the business that earns from the one that consumes.

Segment definitions change, so the table has to be reconstructed each time rather than carried forward, and the reconciliation lines at the foot of the note explain what is unallocated.

Five years, rebuilt by hand. There is no shortcut.