Jardine Lloyd sees profits rise in 2011

Asia and Latin America are driving revenue growth at Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT), the insurance firm.

Pre-tax profit, excluding exception and non-recurring items, jumped 13% to £147.6m in 2011 (2010: £130.1m) on revenues of £818.8m, up 10% from £746.3m the previous year. The trading margin increased from 17.4% to 18.0%.

Reported earnings per share fell 3% from 41.7p to 40.4p year-on-year, while the dividend per share was increased from 22.5p to 24p.

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Revenue in the firm's London market operations increased to £329.9m, up 8%, with organic growth of 7% in a highly competitive marketplace throughout 2011.

The group said it saw particularly strong revenue uplifts in high growth economies, with Asian revenues up 28% year-on-year and Latin American revenues up 19%.

Within the Risk & Insurance Group, retail revenue increased by 15% to £312.5m and included 10% organic growth. Underlying trading profit increased by 10% to £70.1m for the year, representing an underlying trading margin of 22%, compared to 24% for the prior year.

However JLT's Canadian and some of its European businesses had a more difficult year and this affected the overall retail trading margin.divi

In a statement the firm said: "Our emphasis on being a client-first organisation continues to serve us well, as demonstrated by our strong growth record. Our strategy, built around growing our areas of speciality, strengthening our international footprint and driving efficiency, provides us with confidence that we will continue to make financial progress in 2012."

Cash at the end of the year was up from £524.9m to £573.6m.

The share price rose 1.07% to 709.50p by 08:17.

NR