Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this morning's virtual presentation of Savills' interim results for the six months ending June 30, 2023. I emphasized in March this year the increased economic uncertainty which we were facing and its direct impact on the real estate markets in which we operate. The rapid and continued interest rate rises that have occurred in most markets in order to tame stubborn inflationary pressures, has led to one of the most dramatic reductions in real estate transactional volumes since the global financial crisis. This has affected confidence in both the investment and occupational markets alike. For investors, the increased cost and reduced availability of debt has meant many have adopted a wait and see approach as pricing recalibrates. The result of this has been investment volumes in global real estate falling by 55% year-on-year.
For occupiers, in particular in the office center, decisions are also being deferred due to high fit-out costs, as well as the impact of flexible working policies affecting their future occupational needs. Office leasing volumes in major markets fell between some 17% and 29% during the period, with vacancy rates significantly increasing. Even the resilience we have experienced over the last few years in the residential and the logistics sector are also affected, albeit this is more of a normalization of demand rather than the very buoyant conditions these sectors experienced through and post-COVID. We are starting to see some green shoots in specific markets where inflation may have already peaked, and the likelihood of future interest rate rises or reductions is now starting to restore some confidence.
One thing is for certain, there are strong pressures on real estate to continue to evolve further, whether it's the drive to attract and look after employees, provide greater amenity or enhance sustainability, and also improve supply chain security against a backdrop of increased global risk. What is evident across our client base is the need for advice, with greater emphasis on consultancy, on asset management and property management services, alongside accurate market intelligence. Moving on to our highlights. Despite the major reduction in transactional volumes I've highlighted, I'm pleased to announce a resilient set of results, highlighting the strength and balance of our global business.
The, the balance has allowed us to partially mitigate the significant falls in transaction advisory revenues. I'm pleased to report group revenue for the period of just over GBP 1 billion, a reduction of 2.5% year-on-year. Underlying profit was significantly impacted as a result of our revenues being more weighted to the less transactional business lines of property management and consultancy, which inevitably carry lower margins, as well as our strategy of maintaining core transactional bench strength. The overall result of this was to reduce group underlying profit to GBP 16.3 million. The drivers of the performance has been the strong balance, as I say, provided by the less transactional businesses, which achieved an aggregate revenue increase of 9% year-on-year, with the star performer being property and facilities management, which increased revenues by 16% during the period.
Due to the market conditions I highlighted earlier, commercial transaction revenue decreased by 20% overall as markets contracted across all regions. Increased mortgage costs also affected residential transaction revenue, down 22% overall, albeit we saw an increase in the APAC region as market momentum improved in the Greater China region. It's also worth highlighting the robust performance of our investment management platform, which, despite a significant reduction in transactional activity, revenue decreased by only 4% during the period, with assets under management reducing by 11% overall. We continue to adopt a policy of conservative gearing and maintaining a strong balance sheet, with net cash position of GBP 12.9 million for the period. In light of this performance, we are declaring an interim dividend of 6.9 p per share. This is supported by the strong performance of our less transactional business.
Taking into account the exceptionally difficult conditions experienced during the period, I am pleased with these results, supported by a robust balance sheet, which allowed us to undertake selective, continued investment and maintain our key operational bench strength as transactional volumes start to recover. Against this backdrop, we continue to maintain strong cost discipline, enhancing efficiency across our platform. Turning now to the diversity of our revenue. Thanks. I've mentioned the increase in revenue provided by our non-transactional businesses, which now represent over two-thirds of our overall group revenue and the highest relative proportion since the COVID year of 2020. The largest component of this is property and facilities management, representing 43% of our total revenue globally.
In the major markets in which we operate, we are regarded as the leading provider, and we now manage over 2.5 billion sq ft of assets, together with a further 1 billion sq ft in joint venture with our clients. The principal driver of our growth here is organic, looking after our clients with great care, and thereby winning greater market share. Our portfolio of consultancy services, representing 19% of our revenue, also experienced growth in project management as well as sustainability consultancy under our Savills Earth platform, which continues to experience very strong demand worldwide from our clients. It is worth noting the continued geographic weighting and diversification of our global revenues, greater weighting, in particular, towards the APAC region, where we continue to invest in many key developing markets, which will add strategic value to our business going forward.
Moving on now to our strategic growth and the focus. Despite the turbulence in the transactional markets, it is vital we continue to take a long-term view on this growth, as well as providing innovative services to our clients during very challenging times. Opportunities obviously arise from adversity, and in particular, the enormous pressure on refinancing has allowed us to grow our debt advisory and recovery services. We also continue to invest in our rapidly expanding Global Occupier Solutions platform, managing portfolios on behalf of corporate occupiers, where there is strong demand for enhanced efficiency and improved amenity. Strong demand for improved sustainability is accelerating obsolescence, particularly evident in the secondary office markets, where there is an urgent need for repositioning or repurposing. In light of this, we have developed GreenFiT, a specialist project management service.
In March, I highlighted our focus on growth of our global residential platform, and I will update you shortly on some of the key initiatives we have already completed since then. We're also focused on the growth of our retail services platform in prime luxury markets, where demand has actually recovered significantly post-pandemic. We also continue to invest in development of our industrial and logistics platform. We're seeing manufacturing demand recover and greater interest now in developing markets due to labor inflation and also increased geopolitical uncertainty with a rise on onshoring. While investor demand is subdued, it remains much stronger in a number of specialist sectors, and our focus on living, debt, natural capital investment products plays to this demand going forward.
Finally, bearing in mind the significant advancement of AI, we are progressively applying this where relevant across our platform, in particular, areas such as property and facilities management, and valuation and consultancy to provide greater efficiency of service and more accurate data analytics. Turning now to the U.K., in particular, the commercial markets. The factors I highlighted earlier have had a significant impact in the U.K., particularly on commercial investment volumes, which, as you can see, fell 54% year-over-year, with all sectors affected. London is one of the fastest global markets to recalibrate and is recapturing its crown as the world's top destination for cross-border investment. Office takeup across the six major regional cities remain fairly resilient, particularly in Grade A, due to a flight to quality, while secondary markets are falling sharply.
Logistics leasing, whilst falling back significantly, is only 1% below the pre-COVID average. Focusing on performance of our own business, whilst our revenues fell back some 7% year on year, a significant offset to reduce transactional revenues, was strong growth in property management, where our teams won new mandates from PATRIZIA, Tritax, and Global Mutual. Whilst our project management teams were also exceptionally busy expanding our framework agreements with Crown Estate and Amazon, amongst others. Our portfolio evaluations platform also continued to grow with new mandates from ARA and M&G, and we invested in our debt and loan servicing teams. Global Occupier Solutions continues to gain market share, and our U.K.-based team successfully secured new mandates from Epsom and Linklaters. Highlighting the growth of our less transactional businesses, our transactional teams took significant market share.
In London, our commercial investment team achieved a share of over 40% and advising on some of the largest transactions in the first half, including Winchester House and the sale of New Street Square. Our market share on national sales exceeded 15%. Finally, Savills Earth were instructed on the decarbonization of Mirastar's portfolio across Europe, as well as securing approval for the largest solar farm in the U.K,. Moving on to residential. Inevitably, the rapid increase in mortgage costs has particularly affected the mainstream market, with completions here down 18% year-on-year, as well as the market experiencing price falls, with agreed sales behind pre-pandemic levels by circa 9%. The prime markets held up better, where there is less dependence on mortgage finance, and particularly in central London.
Whilst prime regional markets have seen price reductions and agreed sales over GBP 1 million are down 17% on the prior year. Conversely, rental markets remain exceptionally strong, with prime rents growing by 3% nationally, reflecting stock shortages in many markets. We are obviously experiencing great resilience in sales in prime London, where we increased our market share to over 30% on sales above GBP 5 million. More difficult conditions continue nationally, in particular, new build development sales regionally. Our residential lettings business increased its volume by 8%, as well as expanding its letting platform in London with six new hubs.
We also continue to invest in our auctions team, where we sold over GBP 260 million of stock during the period, up 20% on the prior year, and our multifamily capital markets business has retained its very dominant position in the U.K., transacting over GBP 1.7 billion of stock and acting for clients, including Goldman Sachs, Legal & General, and Aware Super, on some of the largest transactions in the sector. Turning on to Asia Pacific. As widely reported on, we have also seen a momentum slow in the region, particularly during the second quarter in China. The most resilient markets are Singapore and Japan, with some recovery underway in Hong Kong and South Korea, whilst leasing volumes remain subdued across all main office markets. Moving on to our own business.
Whilst our revenues in the region were broadly stable, we've been particularly impacted by reductions in commercial transaction markets, offset by strong growth in property and facilities management, as well as growth in the residential markets, in we operate, in particular, Greater China. Despite the reduced transactional volumes, we maintained our leading market share in commercial investment in Singapore and also Hong Kong, which currently stands at 37%. We also undertook some of the largest transactions in the period, including a single sale in Hong Kong for over $750 million, and also in South Korea, where we traded Seoul City Tower for over $350 million.
Following on from the recent acquisition of AMS, a facilities management business in Singapore, we've also developed new green energy and sustainability teams, as well as growing our master planning and development consultancy services here. In line with our overall group strategy, we've also expanded our Global Occupier Solutions platform across four more countries, as well as investing in the growth of our industrial and logistics teams in both India and Australia. To strengthen our property management platform further in Australia, we've just acquired Site8, a specialist retail property management platform, and have also recently established a new international residential sales team in Singapore. Moving on to North America. Here, in line with other markets, rapid interest rate rises since the beginning of the year have affected confidence and market momentum.
The direct result of this has been the stalling of investment volumes, falling to a low equaling 2011, with particular weakness also in the office sector. This is compounded by occupational demand for offices remaining subdued, with low densities continuing due to flexible working policies, particularly affecting the West Coast and the tech sector. This has resulted in national office availability increasing to almost 25%, with significant rental falls, therefore. In terms of our business performance, our overall revenues reduced by 7%, which, taking into account we are primarily involved in office leasing activity for corporate occupiers, was a respectable result compared with the national fall in leasing activity exceeding 17%. Following on from the divisional reorganization we undertook in North America, which I outlined in March, our Global Occupier Solutions platform has accelerated growth.
In fact, already exceeding the revenues generated during the full year last year, and securing new mandates, including Baxter, Northmarq, ATA Restoration, among many others. We've also continued to grow our project management and workplace consultancy services to support this growth. We've also expanded our industrial and logistics capability in Canada and selected U.S. markets, including supply chain consultancy. During the year, our teams undertook some of the largest deals, including a large distribution deal in L.A., acting on a 1.4 million sq ft facility, as well as advising Sony Pictures on a 225,000 sq ft office relocation. Moving on to continental Europe and the Middle East. Well, here, overall forecasts continue to suggest sluggish growth across the Eurozone, there are inevitably significant regional variations.
Confidence has weakened over the main Northern European markets, resulting in investment volumes here declining by over 59% year-over-year. Particular weakness in offices. Occupational markets have also been adversely affected, with office takeup across the Eurozone down 29%, with Germany being the most impacted market. Turning to our own business, whilst our revenues grew by 9%, our transactional revenues fell by 19% year-over-year, offset by an increase in lower margin revenue from property management and consultancy. Our strategy to invest in less cyclical revenues has been supportive during this difficult period, with strong growth achieved by our Germany property management platform, as well as growth in Ireland and Spain.
The growth was reflected by winning key new mandates in Germany from PATRIZIA, P3, and Barings, as well as pan-European management portfolios for Azora and Realty Income. By the strategy of maintaining transactional bench strength, our market share in commercial investment has increased significantly in Italy, Spain, and also Ireland, where we increased our market share to 36%. In line with our global residential strategy, we acquired Predibisa in Porto, as well as Viving in Italy, a prime residential business with offices in Milan and Rome. In the Middle East, we're also seeing a strong resurgence of activity, particularly in UAE and KSA, and we've recently doubled the size of our team in KSA in opening a new office in Jeddah. Our Global Occupier Solutions team also performed well, winning new European mandates for Dell Technologies, NBCUniversal, Comcast, and Johnson Matthey.
Turning on now to Investment Management. Well, here, a lack of liquidity in target markets with limited distress to date, has meant that values has taken time to mark to market, creating challenges for capital deployment in the short term. Whilst liquidity is starting to improve, particularly in the office sector, other sectors such as multifamily and European logistics, remain under constrained supply. Within our own business, our overall revenue reduced by 4% during the period, primarily due to this reduced transactional activity. We continue to focus on four principal themes, namely European logistics, living sector, debt, and natural capital. Whilst capital raising, therefore, remains challenging, our relationship with Samsung Life progresses well, with over $900 million now committed or invested to date, with further equity provision also anticipated.
This gives us considerable dry powder to invest once liquidity improves and market transparency on repricing has evolved slightly further. Due primarily to the execution of the strategic realization program on behalf of our investors, our assets under management experienced a modest decline, decreasing by 11% to EUR 23.7 billion. This highlights the resilience of our strategy and our business model, and we've continued to invest, extending our debt platform into Australia and growing our business also in Japan. Finally, Savills Investment Management were rightly awarded the Property Fund Manager of the Year in Real Estate at the recent Property Week Awards, a fitting accolade to the strong track record of performance for our investors. I will now hand over to Simon to talk you through the financial review.
Thank you very much, Mark. Good morning, everybody. You've had a pretty good exposition, I think, of the highlights of the period. What I would like to do is just reiterate the robustness of that revenue performance as we saw the less transactional businesses largely replacing the reduction in revenue from transaction volumes in reducing in the markets. This is quite important because it's also during what we believe is the low point in the period or thereabout, in, in, in world real estate markets. The other point about margin is, is that we've not only committed to maintaining our core roster and bench strength at a time when our clients need our advice almost more than ever, but we have, in fact, also continued to acquire and recruit during this period.
Finally, as anticipated, you'll see the reduction in, in net cash down at the bottom of this slide, as the above factors increased our normal seasonal working capital about outflow in the first half. I'll talk a bit more about that in a moment. Notwithstanding that, we increased the dividend, the interim ordinary dividend, which is supported by, as you know, the less transactional businesses. By way of aside, I would add that that dividend has grown by 2.5 times inflation on an annualized basis, consistently for well over a decade since we first instituted this structure. Now, if we turn to the performance of our, our business segments, I think there are really three key overarching themes to take away from this.
The first is the obvious reduction in transaction revenues against a maintained staff roster, and including salary inflation, and that's the impact you can see there on the bottom line, top line and bottom line, respectively. The second is the growth in the less transactional businesses was driven really in this period by property management, the lowest of the three margins under normal circumstances. Finally, you can see the effect that market stasis, and particularly the sentiment attached thereto, has on parts of our consultancy business. We've talked a bit about those parts that are growing, but we've also seen parts of the consultancy portfolio slow down during the period for obvious reasons. We've also mentioned the impact of reduced transaction fees in investment management, which is the other market-related element, if you like, to the, to the less transactional piece.
Before we turn to the geographical performance, though, I would like to make one point, picked up in the release itself, and it's in the most minuscule writing at the bottom of this slide. As you're aware, the central unallocated costs that we don't allocate out to, to the individual segments or regions, have improved substantially period on period. Now, part of that improvement is, is fundamental cost control, and performance expectation in terms of central incentive programs, et cetera. A part of it, and, and actually the significant part, has been the return of investment income, and particularly interest income, on group cash balances, which helps to defray some of those central costs. That, that's the rationale for that movement. Let's now move into the geographic performance of our business.
In the U.K., the loss of transactional revenue was substantially mitigated by, as you know, the increased less transactional revenues, with a consequent reduction in margin you can see there. In Asia, the story is very similar, I think the one, the one aspect of this six months, which was probably not as we expected, was the relative slowdown in, in mainland China. We had expected, post-Chinese New Year and the elimination of lockdown restrictions, a greater level of recovery during the period, which, which simply hasn't happened for a variety of reasons that you'll all be very familiar with already anyway. That's probably the, the downside piece during the period. Meanwhile, in North America, as you already heard, our revenue performance clearly outperformed the leasing market, and you can see the impact of trading at or around that breakeven level.
Finally, in continental Europe and the Middle East, revenue growth came largely from property management and investment management, outweighing reductions in transactional service lines, particularly associated with more northern countries in that, in that region, including Germany and the Netherlands and France. These markets are the ones that contributed the majority of that bottom line transactional loss, which you'll see impacted here overall. If we turn now to cash flow, the most obvious bridging item period to period is, is the negative working capital movement that we'd always have in the first half, as prior years' bonus payments are made in full, and the accrual rate on the current year is much, much lower at the halfway stage, and in this instance, in a down year, lower in an absolute sense as well.
That movement alone accounted for GBP 211 million of the outflow. Everything else was largely as you would have expected it to be. Expenditure on all the other captions in the cash flow was broadly similar to the previous period, except we clearly didn't have a special dividend in the first half of 2023, which we did in 2022. Over on the far right of that bridge, you can see that FX on cash balances held was a negative, nearly GBP 18 million, as opposed to a positive GBP 17 million the year before.
We're obviously in the second half, looking forward to our traditional accumulation of cash, and it may interest you to know, again, as an aside, that at the end of last month, July, the net cash position of the group had moved from GBP 12.9 million you see here to just over GBP 57 million. We expect that to continue through the period. I would add, by way of context, that we have maintained through the COVID period and into the rising interest rate cycle, a much higher level of liquidity than we have historically maintained, and that was deliberate.
It may have been considered by some as balance sheet inefficient, but we are unique among the international firms in being cash positive at this period, having maintained our bench strength and continued to invest in the business in the form of acquisitions and recruitment during one of the most severe transactional downturns the industry has seen. Indeed, our cash position today, if you look at it, actually much more resembles the pre-COVID historical norm of cash flow pattern than it does the performance of the last two or three reporting cycles. I think that's enough on cash. I'll turn now to the performance of our individual business lines. You've had a lot of detail, so I'll try and summarize a bit.
Starting with the commercial transaction business, obviously, the global rise in interest rates is the key catalyst to reduced activity as markets recalibrated at their own pace, with a possible couple of exceptions, being Japan and Singapore, South Korea in particular. If we start there in APAC, Japan is a strong outlier, and the work we've done over recent years in Singapore has also started to pay dividends in our business. As I've said before, the slower-than-anticipated pace of recovery in China is the principal difference between our, our original expectation and the outturn during the period. Turning to the UK, the markets, as you've heard, recalibrating fast, and the focus is primarily on prime sustainable stock, but with retail improving as well.
In continental Europe and the Middle East, the individually largest markets, as I've said in the north, were weak. As you move progressively south, they were more resilient, and the Middle East was improving well during the period. In North America, market share gains and activity in the southern states at least partially mitigated the effect of reductions in major corporate HQ activity in the traditional metropolis markets of New York, San Francisco, et cetera. Also, as part of the North American reorganization we talked about at the full year, and Miles just mentioned, we did conduct a cost reduction exercise in the US market, and that will bear fruit over the next 18-24 months as we seek to improve our margin over the next 5 years.
If I turn now to residential, the inevitable reduction from the post-COVID bonanza in the U.K. residential market, particularly regional, has slowed down as we knew it would. We did also experience a significant reduction in the institutional residential business of PRS, BTR, et cetera, as clients came to got to grips with the impact of increased funding costs on their, on those operating models. However, it's also worth noting, and I think this is important, that the residential performance in the first half of 2023 is still one of our top three performances in the last decade in terms of revenue, and substantially ahead of 2019 in the pre-COVID period.
We turn to Asia, as Mark said, we saw growth in China, and that was against obviously a pretty soft comparative, where China, in particular, was in the throes of COVID and lockdown-related restrictions, which obviously had lifted during this period. It was good to see growth start to come back. We turn now to property management. The one area not adversely affected by macroeconomic interest rate challenges, and which delivered double-digit growth in both revenue and profits during the period. In Asia, revenue benefited from the full year effect of the acquisition of AMS that Mark mentioned, a facilities manager in Singapore, which was in the second half of last year. Absent that, revenue growth was actually 10%, which is still at the sort of top end of our normalized expectations for growth in that business.
However, as AMS was marginally loss-making during the integration period, that did have an impact on the, on the bottom line of the, of the business in APAC. In the U.K., we saw good growth in FM in particular, and the overall margin has started to revert to historical normality, both through that growth and the return of finance income, which better offsets, and that's interest, which better offsets the administrative costs of what is a very large treasury function on behalf of clients. Finally, in continental Europe and the Middle East, strong revenue growth in Germany helped to improve the H1 loss position to near break even that you see here. We turn to consultancy.
As an overarching point, I will say that you recall that last time I indicated that salary cost inflation was particularly weighted towards our professional staff in the consultancy arena, and that was last year. That is still continues to be the case across the board, which does obviously impact the margin across this business. In terms of trading performance, in the U.K., revenue growth, as Mark said, came from project management, sustainability, and natural capital-related consultancy services, which offset reductions in some of the longer-range service lines, such as development or major infrastructure type projects. These latter naturally tend to get put on the back burner during difficult market conditions, and that's the sort of sentiment point I referred to earlier.
In Asia Pacific, we saw reductions in our principal service lines of development, consultancy, and valuation, as you'd expect, in all the major markets, and some cost inflation, which put us temporarily into loss in that period. In continental Europe, it's a very similar story to Asia Pacific. In North America, you can see the impact of the stasis, particularly in the tech sector, which constitutes quite a significant part of our consultancy in the Americas, and cost inflation, in particular in project management, together with the impact of the deferral of some quite high profile and more profitable project management projects during this period. If I finally turn now to investment management. As you've heard, the major revenue difference period on period was the lack of transaction fee income, which was down by 67%.
For obvious reasons, as a fiduciary investor, we have to make sure we are deploying capital at the right moment into any market. This was offset, though, by a small increase in performance fees as we disposed of a number of long-held, particularly logistics assets in Northern Europe, which have performed exceptionally well. As Mark said, base management fees remain stable and, in fact, represent over 80% of the revenue of the business as of today. I'm glad to say that Samsung has met its initial contractual capital commitment a year and a half only into the first five-year term of the relationship, although much of that capital remains undeployed for obvious reasons, as I said earlier, at the end of June.
If you combine that with our other capital raising, Savills Investment Management is sitting on dry powder of about GBP 1.7 billion for debt and equity products in due course. In the coming months, we expect product launches in living, in Asian and European debt, and we also expect some quite exciting developments in the arena of natural capital. On that upside, I'll hand you back to Mark to conclude. Thanks, Simon. Thanks.
Great. Thank you. Overall, our results represent a resilient performance, driven by our less transactional businesses, and in particular, strong growth in property and facilities management. Whilst we have experienced significant weakness in the transactional markets, there are signs of recovery in certain markets as pricing recalibrates and confidence starts to return. In addition, we are continuing to experience strong demand for our consultancy services that I've highlighted, in particular around ESG and improved sustainability, and we also remain fully on track to meet our own corporate commitments in this area. Due to our strategy to maintain core transactional bench strength, we are carrying forward very strong capital transaction pipelines, which will launch as market conditions improve.
Our reputation and conservative approach to gearing and the maintenance of our balance sheet strength allows us to continue to selectively invest in areas of strategic growth within the key themes that we've outlined. That said, the prolonged interest rate uncertainty is continuing to affect transactional markets and has reduced the range of possible outcomes somewhat for 2023. We do, however, expect progressive improvement in transactional activity through the balance of the year and into 2024. Finally, I would like to thank all our worldwide staff for their amazing continued efforts in supporting our client base under extremely challenging positions. I'm very proud of the passion and the professionalism they continue to exhibit, as well as the innovation we're able to develop in enhancing our service provision.
This now ends the formal part of our presentation. Simon and I will be very keen to take any questions that you have. Thank you very much. We've got some already.
We do have three questions, all from Mr. Chris Millington. Thank you. The first one is: Could you please comment on the expected level of operational gearing in the transactional business when volumes return?
Yes, and this is an important factor, because clearly it is the, the, the positive side of the coin of retaining our bench strength during difficult times. It depends entirely, Chris, on the nature of the transactional business you're talking about. Very broadly speaking, between lease-- commercial leasing, residential, investment, sales, and commercial investment, I would expect somewhere between 30% and 45% of incremental revenue to fall through to the bottom line as revenues improve. I hope that answers your question.
Ready to go to the next one.
Second one, I think, is for Mark, which is.
Yeah. Aw, yes, a comment on the scale of our current pipeline of work from a historical context. Chris, again, that whole policy of maintaining the bench strength allows us to take market share, and I mentioned a few of those stats in the presentation. I would say, therefore, in those markets where we are strongest, our pipeline is stronger than ever. We've obviously got to make sure we can realize it. As market conditions improve, we will be able to achieve that, particularly in capital markets transactions. That's where we're seeing the strongest pipelines, and they are higher than historic levels. I think leasing is probably normalized market volumes, but certainly capital markets will be higher going forward.
I think Chris has got another one which says: Can you comment on June, July trading in the light of the rise in cost of debt over the period?
Yes, I suppose that was the, that was the relative rise from about 12 weeks before now, when, I think the general mood music was that interest rates had possibly peaked and then subsequently turned out not to have done. The general mood is obviously, higher for longer, is probably the best way of putting it. We had a, had a strong June-
Right
I should say, without doubt. We've started the second half, absolutely in line with our expectations, including some quite sizable transactions that have been cooking for some time. That's both in Europe and in Asia, actually, as well as the U.K. I think we're, I, I'd say we're in line, is probably the right way of putting it. Again, I think residentially, we also had a good.
Yeah
July. That's positive.
Clyde has asked the question, a perfectly valid question, I'd say: Are there more plans to address costs, especially thinking about the European business?
I think that's, should we box in confidence.
Yes.
let's do that. I think the, the first step, it always looks worse at, at difficult times in the market because we are retaining bench strength deliberately and therefore sacrificing margin deliberately in order to benefit as we come out into recovery by having helped clients when they can't do anything. That philosophy is holding true. There's no doubt about that. Clearly, we are focused on discretionary costs. We have been and will continue to be, and that's the area that we, we, you know, look to continue to make sensible, sensible savings in.
I would say that things like travel and entertainment have re-remained at the kind of 75%-79% of pre-COVID levels that we articulated over the last couple of years, and that is actually very creditable in my view, in an environment where particularly air travel costs have gone up by at least 25% on a unit basis. We are doing less.
But, and paying less than we did in the, in previous periods. I don't know whether you want.
Yeah, no, I just think the, the, the piece around that is, is, is right. It's in, in particular, sort of the buildup of our pipelines in Europe is strong. So markets like Italy, markets like Germany, Spain, we are maintaining, and Ireland, we are growing that pipeline. So you know, that, again, it's timing as to when that can come through. We're being very cost efficient in, in where we invest, and primarily we're investing is in the less transactional markets, as Simon has outlined. We are maintaining that core bench strength there nonetheless. We do believe that's the right strategy going forward.
There are a couple more questions. Again, Clyde's asked: 'What should we be thinking about H2 central costs?' Sadly, they probably, they won't be as low as they were in the first half, where we did distinctly benefit from the sort of savings I was talking about and the interest income. I think in practice we were about just over GBP 16 million, just under GBP 16.5 million for last year as a whole. I think that it is likely that we'll move up to something around about the GBP 10 million mark. Could be GBP 9 million-GBP 12 million, I would suggest, is a sensible range for the full year, that is. If that answers the question. Then Clyde has also asked: 'How's your acquisition pipeline looking, and are you looking to step up investment?'
Again, it's very selective, Clyde, around the themes that we've already outlined to you. If I just start with those. The big themes, definitely expansion, continued expansion of our global residential platform. You've seen the 2 acquisitions we've made. We're looking at, you know, potential opportunities in the APAC region as well. That's 1 theme. The 2nd theme being Global Occupier Solutions, the growth of that platform, and adding services, consultancy services, alongside, you know, what's required alongside that. You know, those are 2 very important planks. I think there are other themes out there, which we're very carefully looking at. Flexible leasing. We know our Workthere platform has continued to do well. You know, we're seeing still strong demand for that type of product.
You know, we may look to substantiate that. Actually, retail, I highlighted retail. Retail through that recalibration, prime luxury markets are also doing well. We are, we are considering whether we need to increase our bench strength there. Nothing enormous. These are, these are sensible acquisitions, and they're very selective in the themes we talk about.
Finally, Mark O'Donnell has said: 'Can you shed more light on GreenFiT? Is it a consultant recommending various supply chains to refit properties or an actual fit-out business in its own right?'
Yeah.
Yeah, so realistic.
Yeah. It, it's more of the former rather than the latter. We do have capability in different markets to actually undertake fit out, but the GreenFiT is very much more around marshaling the services to ensure that we can use our green knowledge and credentials to actually make sure that the product is fit for purpose going forward. We do undertake this sort of work in different markets, but it's very carefully constructed as to how we, how we achieve that, to ensure that we maintain, you know, reduced risk.
It lies substantially within the project management business.
It does. It does. It's boots on the ground doing this. This is not just theoretical consultancy. It's actually making sure that the product, you know, achieves what's required.
I think unless there are any more questions, I think that is it. Mark, do you want to close?
Okay. Well, thank you all very much for, for joining. For those of you in the U.K., you're gonna get a couple of days of our summer that's returned before it's blown away at the weekend. Thank you very much indeed, and thank you for your continued interest and support. Look forward to speaking to you at the, at the year-end.