Top 10 quantity surveyor Currie & Brown has hinted at a fall in profit in its next annual results.
The company recorded a pre-tax profit of £1.4m on a £38m turnover for the 12 months to 31 March 2002 in the results it has just posted with Companies House.

But in the first annual results to be posted since the company moved from traditional partnership to limited liability company, Currie & Brown chief executive David Broomer indicated that the subsequent period had been less successful.

He said: "We are reasonably happy with the profits.
But it's tough – whether we will make quite as much this year I'm not so sure."

Currie & Brown reorganised its business and changed its status in March 2001. Broomer said the move, which was first mooted in the late 1990s, had been complex, but was worthwhile.

He added that the company was now focusing on changing its internal culture, because "the way we look at some things is still as a partnership".

Broomer added that it was to early to deduce much about the commercial consequences of the change in the company's structure. It had been a partnership since its founding in 1876.