This increase was said to be driven by a strong performance in its less transactional business lines, which rose by 16% and accounted for 57% of its revenue in 2019.

•   DFT Roundtable: How rising costs, coronavirus and a labour shortage could stall property developments in 2020
•   Savills secures planning for habitable 'super slender' tower in Birmingham
•   £1m-plus residential transactions up 12.8%

Other highlights from the results included:

• underlying profit before tax maintained at £143.4m (2018: £143.7m), despite a £3.5m reduction in profit
• statutory profit before tax increased by 6% to £115.6m (2018: £109.4m)
• UK profits increased by 7% to £81.9m
• Savills UK Residential grew revenues by 6%
• Revenue in North America was up 11%, with underlying profit up 35% to £17.3m
• Savills Investment Management reported a record year with revenue up 19%, while profits rose by 65% to £18.1m
   

"I am very pleased that Savills delivered a good performance in 2019 in some challenging market conditions,” said Mark Ridley, group chief executive at Savills.

“We continue to focus on growing our less transactional businesses, increasing our share of the global transactional markets and enhancing the resilience of the business.

“While we continue to monitor the impact of global uncertainties on investor and occupier demand for real estate, we have made a good start to 2020 with the first two months outperforming the same period last year on all measures.”

Mark added that it was difficult to accurately predict the impact of Covid-19 on its business operations for 2020, although Savills does expect a “greater weighting of activity” in the second half of the year.