Year	P \u2013 Pre-tax margin	B \u2013 Breakeven	WC \u2013 Working Capital
2016	7.4%	\u0e3f483.3m	+\u0e3f87.1m
2017	4.5%	\u0e3f486.5m	+\u0e3f32.5m
2018	4.4%	\u0e3f635.2m	\u2212\u0e3f13.2m
2019	\u22122.1%	\u0e3f984.7m	\u2212\u0e3f288.2m
2020	5.5%	\u0e3f928.2m	\u2212\u0e3f126.7m
2021	2.4%	\u0e3f866.3m	\u2212\u0e3f15.0m
2022	2.6%	\u0e3f979.6m	\u2212\u0e3f92.8m
2023	3.8%	\u0e3f1,091.2m	+\u0e3f46.6m
2024	5.4%	\u0e3f964.5m	\u2212\u0e3f16.5m
2025	0.9%	\u0e3f1,030.8m	\u2212\u0e3f108.6m

Profitability moves first, in 2017. Breakeven escalates in response, in 2018. Working capital\u2019s structural deficit follows two years after profitability\u2019s first move, in 2019 \u2013 the clearest single illustration of the sequence Step 7 describes. The full ten-year record is shown above, both commercial cycles in full: the pattern this table demonstrates is not confined to the years that illustrate it most clearly.

The Recoveries2020 and 2024 both show genuine, well-executed improvement, measurable across profitability, breakeven, and working capital together. Both reversed: 2020\u2019s relief unwound in full once conditions normalised; 2024\u2019s near-recovery peak was followed in 2025 by the sharpest single-year deterioration in the working capital position across the whole series. A cause that is variable and external does not reproduce the same recovery-and-reversal shape twice, at comparable intensity, ten years apart. A structural cause does.

The ShortfallThe retained value shortfall \u2013 the gap between the pre-tax profit JLT would generate at the Group\u2019s 7.6% benchmark and the pre-tax profit it actually generated \u2013 runs at a stable annualised rate of approximately USD 1.24 million across the record, virtually unchanged whether measured across nine years or across the most recent six. A shortfall driven by variable trading conditions varies with those conditions. A shortfall driven by a structural cause holds steady regardless of them.

The ConnectionThe 2019 trough and the 2025 reassertion are the two points in the record where the pattern is most acute \u2013 consistent with Step 8\u2019s account of a mechanism whose visible weight in the accounts is not constant. This Roadmap does not attempt to measure that balance directly; the accounts do not permit it. What they permit is the dated, sequenced pattern set out above, and a retained value shortfall stable enough, across every period boundary tested, to be more consistent with a structural cause than a variable one.

The FindingTaken as a whole, the pattern in JLT\u2019s ten-year accounts is consistent with the operation of a Buy-the-Business Model.