The group’s revenue increased by 10% to reach £1.93 billion (2018: £1.76bn), which was driven by a strong performance (+16%) in the firm’s Less Transactional business lines (57% of 2019 revenue).

Savill’s underlying profit before tax was maintained at £143.4 million, (2018: £143.7m), despite a £3.5m reduction in profit from the implementation of IFRS 16.

The advisor’s statutory profit before tax increased by 6% to reach £115.6m, rising from £109.4m the year before.

The firm’s final ordinary and supplementary interim dividends also rose by 3% to total 32.0p per share (2018: 31.2p).

Savills said the results signify another resilient performance with increased revenues and stable profits.

Nick Penny, head of Savills Scotland, said: “We have enjoyed a strong year in Scotland with our teams across commercial, residential and rural being involved in some of the largest and most prominent deals in the market. We have established an office in Inverness, refurbished our office in Edinburgh and bolstered our team to ensure we continue delivering our best in class expertise to our growing client list.”

“With regards to the Scottish real estate market, we have seen an increase in activity so far and we look forward to continuing to deliver great results for our clients in 2020.”

Mark Ridley, group chief executive, commented: “I am very pleased that Savills delivered a good performance in 2019 in some challenging market conditions. This reflects the strength and resilience of our global, diversified business as we continued to grow our Less Transactional service lines and outperform in many of our transactional markets.

“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.

“As a result of the dynamic situation in respect of COVID-19 it is difficult accurately to predict its impact on our business for 2020 as a whole, although we do expect a greater weighting of activity to the second half of the year.”