Jones Lang LaSalle is cutting over 600 staff worldwide. In Europe, between 50 and 90 staff in the 900-strong English business will go as the company reacts to falling income. Across continental Europe up to 140 of the 1,500 staff face the axe and offices in Stuttgart, Cologne and Vienna are to close.
JLL chief operating officer Chris Peacock, who takes over as chief executive in January, said: “As far as the redundancies are concerned, that is it. It is behind us now. We gave some pretty tough messages and I believe the market is saying it was the right thing to do.” Peacock said no decisions have been made on next year’s salary rises, which are announced in March.
The news that 9% of staff were to go follows the announcement of third quarter losses of $6.2m. JLL will make a $40m provision in the fourth quarter to pay for redundancies. Stuart Scott, chairman and chief executive of JLL, said the job losses were part of a wider cost-cutting programme. “We have a goal of reducing our costs on an annualised basis by at least $45m,” he said.
Hard on the heels of JLL’s announcement, UK agent Chesterton said it is to make up to 65 members of staff redundant. The 1,600-strong quoted agent is expected to cut staff mainly from its agency business.
Chesterton said that it expected to make a pretax loss for the first half of this financial year (six months to December 31) – before restructuring costs, which it estimates at £2.2m. The job cuts and other costs savings will save Chesterton £4m per year, it said. For the year to the end of June, Chesterton recorded pretax profits of £2.3m, down from £5m last year. Total fee income rose by 4% to £70.2m. The resignation of chief executive Michael Holmes was announced on the day of the results.
