Body sacrifice saves agents' shrinking ships

Today's second quarter figures for Jones Lang LaSalle are not good; but not quite as bad in revenue terms as CBRE, which announced last week.

At JLL global income fell 13% to $576m in the three months to June compared to the same period last year. At CBRE the fall was 27% to $955m. At both firms, small profits turned into small losses.

In Europe performance was spookily parallel.  JLL's revenues fell 39% to $143m. At CBRE the revenue fall was 41% to $176m. But both produced matching cost cuts, presumably by sacrificing staff. Operating costs at JLL were down 39% to $144m. At CBRE the cut was 41% to $172m.

CBRE's European chief Mike Strong was praised here for running a tight ship. Clearly JLL's new European captain Christian Ulbrich and his predecessor Alastair Hughes have also thrown plenty of costly bodies overboard.

What you have now are two firms just 60% of the size they were 12 months ago in Europe and barely breaking even. But considering the last 12 months were probably the worst in property history, not a bad result, except for those thrown overboard.