(FORTUNE Magazine) – One of our competitors (the biweekly owned by a perennial Republican presidential wannabe) has been making noise lately about its plans to launch a new foreign edition next year. We'd like to welcome these latecomers abroad--and tell you our international story.

Unlike brand X, which sells only a few thousand copies overseas, FORTUNE currently reaches a minimum of 120,000 subscribers and newsstand buyers outside the U.S. Indeed, circulation in our Asian edition has climbed 10% in the past year alone, as a 15-month expansion drive has added bureaus in Bangkok, New Delhi, Beijing, and Singapore. Fortune Americas, a biweekly Spanish and Portuguese digest of the magazine launched last April in partnership with 18 leading newspapers, now reaches 1.4 million subscribers in the red-hot Latin American market.

This kind of global growth makes for good journalism as well as good business. At least four stories in this issue were spawned as part of our expanded international coverage--ranging from Alex Taylor's profile of the dynamo driving a revolution at Daimler-Benz to an item in Fortune Traveler that identifies Asia's best golf courses.

Another benefit: an enhanced ability to add value for specific groups of readers. In Europe, where Daimler's Jurgen Schrempp appears on the current cover instead of GE's Jack Welch, we've included a short piece on managing change in the Old World. Similarly, our Asian edition in May featured a special cover report on Hong Kong's handover to China.

What stays the same across all editions of FORTUNE is our core coverage of management, technology, people, and trends--a combination we believe will continue to offer you the most compelling and useful business read anywhere.