Recruitment firms take a battering following SThree slowdown

The biggest faller on the FTSE 250 this afternoon is the IT and finance recruitment specialist SThree, down 8.36% following an announcement that earnings growth had slowed in the group's final quarter.

The full-year gross profits were up 17% on the year, but in the final quarter this had slowed to 10%. In the UK the picture was even worse, with the fourth quarter 7% behind 2010.

Another recruitment firm, Michael Page International (MPI), appears to have caught SThree's cold, it is currently the second biggest faller on the FTSE 250, down 3.0%.

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MPI will issue its next update on its own final quarter on the 11th of January. So far this year it has dropped 28%.

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