Greenhill profits fall as advisory gains offset by bad investments
GREENHILL & CO, the New York based investment bank and advisory firm, reported a 6.1 per cent fall in profits in the fourth quarter of 2012 on lower returns from investments.
Despite a 17 per cent rise in revenues from advising clients, a poor run of investments pushed profits down to $15m (£9.5m) from just over $16m in the previous year.
Greenhill saw investment losses of $8m in the quarter, compared with a $9m profit in the same quarter a year earlier.
The results sent shares in Greenhill down around 0.8 per cent in trading yesterday.
Mergers and acquisitions worldwide fell in 2012 for the first time in three years, stunting income from advisory work. For the full year, Greenhill saw a four per cent fall in revenues from advisory work.
However, Greenhill’s chief executive Scott Bok said he expects the market for M&A work to improve in 2013.
“For the near term, it is clear that we began the new year with a far more attractive backlog of announced and pending transactions than we had a year ago,” Bok said yesterday.
Greenhill was founded in 1996 by current chairman Robert Greenhill, who was previously chief executive of Smith Barney.