A raft of companies updated the City this week, mostly with upbeat developments.

Executive search firm Whitehead Mann made an operating profit of £498,000 in the second half of the year, which ended on 31 March. However, it still made a full-year loss of £1.29m. The pre-tax loss was £1.63m, against £19.65m a year earlier when it was hit by exceptional charges following the closure of its North American and its interim management business after closing businesses.
Turnover fell to £39m from £47.2m largely due to the closures.

Whitehead Mann also announced several new appointments, including Janet Preston, who joins as a partner from KPMG.
Prime People, which mostly consists of commercial property recruitment business Macdonald & Company, is in expansion mode. Chief executive Peter Moore told Recruiter that the firm was about to open an office in Hong Kong, and would also launch in Australia.
He is also looking for acquisitions at the “professional end” of the construction market. Current clients include Morley Fund Management, part of insurance giant Aviva. Among the staff Macdonald supplies to Morley are fund managers who specialise in property. 

Prime People reported a loss of £11,000 for the 15 months to 31 March. This included three months of contribution from Macdonald, which it took over late in 2005. Gross fee income for the 15-month period rose to £5.37m, compared with £2.3m for the 12 months to December 2004. Had the businesses been combined for the whole year, the gross fee income for the 12 months to March 2006 would have been £16.5m. Pre-tax profit would have been £1.76m, compared with £901,000 a year earlier.

Executive chairman Robert Macdonald said the net fee income for April and May 2006 was 20% up on a year earlier. He added: “Early indications from our new business in the Middle East are encouraging.”

Penna
Penna Consulting reported a pre-tax profit of £2.6m for the year to March, against a loss of £6.4m a year earlier. Chairman Stephen Rowlinson said the recruitment communications business, started in May, had been “successfully established”.

Telecoms & IT
Glotel reported revenue of £134.18m for the year to March, up from £119.5m a year earlier. Pre-tax profit for the year was £4.02m, up from £2.35m. The telecoms and IT recruiter said the US was the most profitable division. It focuses mostly on contractors, but its Philadelphia office has set up a team for permanent recruitment.  

SThree announced that it had made 3,475 permanent placements in the six months to May, an increase of 32% on the same period a year earlier. At 31 May, the IT specialist recruiter had 4,335 active contractors, up from 3,777 a year earlier, an increase of 14.8%. Contractor gross profit per day rates showed “moderate growth”.

Russell Clements, chief executive, said: ‘The Group has continued to make good progress in the first half, against a background of healthy demand for specialist staff in the UK and Europe.” SThree will announce its interim results for the six months ended May 31 2006 on 24 July.