Financial Services

Our Financial Services business comprises Savills Private Finance (SPF) and Savills Capital Advisors (SCA).

SPF is primarily an independent advisor for residential and commercial mortgages. It is a market leader at the top end of the residential mortgage broking market sourcing loans from a wide range of banks for new purchases, remortgages and investment acquisitions. SPF also provides insurance broking services and financial planning advice to larger clients.

SCA was created in 2008 to provide corporate finance and M&A advice. It also engages in equity raising and debt structuring.

All geographical areas of the UK have been affected by the lack of debt finance from banks and the greatly reduced volume of property transactions. We took early steps to reduce costs and have benefited from the diversity of our offerings. General Insurance and Financial Planning performed strongly.

We recruited a new team during the year to complement our small existing team. This enlarged team is making a significant impact and is already winning mandates. As with any team lift, there were start-up costs as the team got up to speed.

Overall, our financial services businesses made an underlying loss of £1.0m (2007: profit of £5.1m) on revenues of £17.4m (2007: £29.8m).

We expect 2009 to be a challenging year in mortgage broking with further contraction in the UK lending market, particularly for the residential mortgage and commercial debt markets, anticipated. We are looking to drive other service areas in order to reduce our reliance on residential mortgage broking services for delivering profitability in order to ensure our continued success. We are excited by the prospects of our corporate finance business and the additional breadth they offer to our Commercial teams.