For at least the last five years the larger, publicly quoted UK recruitment companies have been falling over themselves to proclaim the extent of their non-UK business.

Robert Walters is now 74% non UK and Ireland, the figure for SThree is 63%, for Hays is 64% and for Michael Page is 77%.

It is clearly a head office objective for these percentages to grow. Unless an agency is in a good or lucky niche, investors are now viewing the UK recruitment market as being competitive to a difficult degree, with growing regulation, operating within a low or no growth economy and with traditional recruitment models in structural decline.