* PageGroup to cut 250 more jobs in April
* PageGroup laid off 132 employees in Q1
* Robert Walters, PageGroup Q1 fees fall 11-12%
(Adds Robert Walters' comment, analyst quote, background)
By Indranil Sarkar and Yadarisa Shabong
April 8 (Reuters) - Recruitment firm PageGroup said
on Wednesday it would shed another 250 staff in April and cut
directors' pay by 20%, as the company and its peer Robert
Walters reported double-digit falls in gross fees in the
first quarter and braced for more pain to come.
London's group of stock-exchange listed global recruiters
have been battening down the hatches for weeks in expectation of
a collapse in revenue due to the coronavirus crisis, and
analysts and industry players have said steeper staffing cuts
looked unavoidable.
The company, which operates in 36 countries and helps hire
executives, professionals and clerical staff, joined peers
including and SThree in cancelling dividend
payouts and suspending financial forecasts due to the
coronavirus crisis.
PageGroup said it had already laid off 104 fee earners and
28 operational support staff in the first quarter, and saw net
fees plunge by one-fourth in March, normally its busiest month.
Analysts at Jefferies in a note said that the company saying
its headcount was unlikely to reduce significantly in the short
term through natural attrition, as was the case during the
Global Financial Crisis, suggests it may be loss-making in the
second and possibly third quarters.
Separately, smaller operator Robert Walters reported an 11%
cut to gross fees dragged down by its UK operations, where
employers' demand for staff plummeted in March with job
vacancies contracting for the first time in nearly 11 years, a
survey of recruiters showed on Wednesday.
Robert Walters also slashed its board pay while saying it
had reduced its workforce by 2% - or 92 jobs - in the first
quarter compared to the end of 2019.
"The voluntary reduction in hours taken up by staff across
the globe, plus the various furlough schemes put in place by a
number of governments, will flow through into the second quarter
headcount figures," Robert Walters, chief executive of the
eponymous company, said in a telephone interview.
"In addition we will not be hiring new staff in this
environment and there will also be natural attrition as per
normal course of business."
(Reporting by Yadarisa Shabong and Indranil Sarkar in
Bengaluru;
Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Alexandra Hudson)