Asia a bright spot for Page

A slump in banking, engineering and construction recruitment – particularly in Europe and the Middle East – caused gross profit at the white-collar jobs group Michael Page to fall almost 5 per cent to £526.8m last year.

Page's offices in Asia gave a decent performance in the last three months of the year, with its Japanese and Chinese divisions helping profit to rise 8.9 per cent. But in the UK, profit fell 2.2 per cent, and Europe and the Middle East was 15.6 per cent down on a year earlier.