Its third quarter trading update this week revealed increased GP of 22.6% in EMEA, 34.9% in the Americas, 3.3% in Asia-Pacific and 9.5% in the UK. However, profits in Greater China were down 26% for the quarter and Mainland China down 32%, in line with continued lockdowns and restrictions, CEO Steve Ingham said in the financial report. Hong Kong’s performance was down by 20%.

Ingham went on to say: “We also saw a slight softening in client confidence across the majority of our regions. This led to a small number of jobs being withdrawn and a slowdown in time to hire in a number of our markets towards the end of the quarter.”

The CEO also flagged up temporary recruitment’s outperformance over permanent, “as clients looked for more flexibility in their resourcing and cost base”.

Group fee earner head count increased by 337 during the quarters into markets “with particularly strong trading conditions such as Germany, or where we saw the highest potential for future growth, which includes PageOutsourcing”, Ingham said.

Non-operations headcount increased by 106 in Q3, giving the group a ratio of fee-earners to non-operations staff of 78:22. Overall, the group had 7,071 fee earners and total headcount of 9,111.

Forthcoming payments of 2022 interim and special dividends of £100.5m are to be paid on 14 October.

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