Manchester helps lift Savills profits

The surveyor turned in a £20.0m pre-tax profit nationally in the six months to July, helped by growth in the North.

Peter Mallinder, head of Savills Commercial Northern, said: "The Savills Manchester office continues to go from strength to strength with increased profits across a number of departments. We have maintained our expansion strategy particularly within the management, retail agency, industrial and building consultancy teams and remain extremely well placed to service our clients both locally and nationally through our established office network."

Savills' Manchester office was established 15 years ago and today employs 150 staff, including six new recruits since the start of this year. Savills recently relocated to new offices in Belvedere on Booth Street.

Group revenue in the first half of the financial year rose 10% to £335.8m and earnings per share were up 23% to 11.8p. An interim dividend of 3.15p a share will be paid, up from 3.0p in the middle of 2010.

Savills said it had net cash in the bank of £25.9m, up from £20.1m at this time in 2010.

Jeremy Helsby, group chief executive of Savills, said: "Savills has delivered a good first half performance as a result of the continued strength of our businesses in key transactional markets in the UK and Asia Pacific. At the same time we have increased revenue and profits in fund management, substantially reduced losses in the US business and improved our like-for-like performance in Continental Europe."

"In the UK and continental Europe, we expect transaction markets to remain unsettled although the fundamentals of the Prime London Residential market remain positive. A healthy pipeline of business from our US operations should lead to continued growth from this region in the second half. Despite the current volatility, Savills remains well positioned with long term growth prospects across our core regions."