After-tax profits at Morson declined to £5.8m for the year ended 31 December 2008, compared to £6.9m in 2007.

However, adjusted profits before amortisation and other exceptional items rose 9.2% to £11.7m (2007: £10.8m).

Group revenues increased by 9.5% to £431.4m (2007: £394m).

Net fee income was up 9.1% to £36.7m (2007: £33.7m).

Non-executive chairman Gerry Mason says: “In spite of the widely reported economic uncertainties in the banking, financial, retail and many other sectors. I can report a strong performance from Morson Group.”

Mason continues: “Our business model focuses on delivering organic growth and consolidating our position as a prime supplier in our key markets by ensuring a good spread of blue chip clients within and across a number of sectors.

“We progressively cross sell the group’s different service offerings to these clients and specifically target areas of spend and long-term activity that are often ultimately supported by public institutions.

“The current climate appears to be working to our advantage. During the latter part of the year we saw an increase in demand for temporary contractors whilst permanent staff demand, which is a small part of our income at just 3.8% of net fee income, declined. This supports our view that clients are taking an increasingly defensive hiring strategy by using temporary personnel as opposed to permanent staff.  

“Morson is looking forward to what will, of course, be a challenging period. However we are confident of our proven strategy and approach to engender long-term relationships which provides critical visibility to our business going forward.”