JCDecaux SA (JCDecaux, Euronext Paris: DEC) announced today that it has won a 20 year street furniture contract in the City of Chicago. JCDecaux’s proposal will provide Chicago – with a population of approximately 3 million - with over 2,000 bus shelters, as well as newsstands, information kiosks and other street furniture structures. The contract is expected to generate some €850 million ($770 million) in advertising revenues during its lifetime and is one of the largest street furniture awards ever made.

The new contract confirms the strength of JCDecaux’s products and is consistent with the Group’s strategy of building leading positions in the relatively young US street furniture advertising market. In 1996, JCDecaux won the street furniture contract for San Francisco and in July this year, in association with Viacom, was selected by the City of Los Angeles for its “Coordinated Street Furniture Program”. Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles are three of the four largest advertising markets in the US.

Jean-François Decaux, Chairman and Co-CEO of JCDecaux, said: “The City of Chicago’s decision to award JCDecaux this contract reflects the quality of our street furniture business and further strengthens our position in the important US advertising market. This latest street furniture contract is one of the largest ever awarded, has a long duration and is expected to generate some €850 million in advertising revenues.

“We are excited by the prospect of enhancing Chicago’s street-scape through our street furniture – a business where we are highly experienced and which we began to develop almost forty years ago. We will be employing local Chicago architects and will be designing state of the art, attractive, clean, well-maintained and universally accessible street furniture.”

In the United States, JCDecaux has been successfully operating the San Francisco street furniture program since 1996. JCDecaux also operates advertising contracts in 52 airports including JFK and La Guardia airports in New York, as well as 97 of the most prestigious malls such as Water Tower Place in Chicago, Roosevelt Field in New York and Beverly Center in Los Angeles, and was recently selected, together with Viacom, to provide a comprehensive street furniture program in Los Angeles.