FINANCIALS: Election uncertainty slows down Hays’ public sector results

While quarterly net fee income (NFI) has grown for Hays’ UK operations, uncertainty around the general election has seen a slowdown for the recruitment giant’s public sector division, according to group finance director Paul Venables.
Fri, 10 April 2015While quarterly net fee income (NFI) has grown for Hays’ UK operations, uncertainty around the general election has seen a slowdown for the recruitment giant’s public sector division, according to group finance director Paul Venables.

The group’s Q3 results covering the period to 31 March of this year reveal group NFI grew 8% overall on the same period last year. NFI for UK operations also grew 8%.

But uncertainty around the result of the UK’s impending general election has caused a “slight” slowdown for Hay’s public sector division, which makes up around 30% of its total UK business.

“What none of us knows is will there be a decision in May?” Venables told Recruiter this morning [10 April].

“You are going to get individuals who say ‘I’m in the public sector, I feel secure in this [local] authority; do I really want to go and work at another authority at the moment?’

“You get less decision making [in the public sector] but across our private sector business, which is 70% of the business, growth was fairly stable.”

That stable growth, Venables told Recruiter, was driven by a recovery of the group’s division that places professionals in the City of London and across the regions within technical specialisms such as IT and construction.

Venables now expects Q4 NFI growth to be between 6-9%.

Further afield, like-for-like NFI growth in the firm’s Asia Pacific operations was 9%, and 8% within Continental Europe and the rest of the world.

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