Knight Frank has reported an 11% fall in pre-tax profits.

They fell to £148.4m for the year to the end of March, down from a record £166.7m the previous year.

Group turnover fell 2%. The main cause, it said, was the decline in transactions in the south-east of England, including London.

The global business, which employs over 19,000 people in about 500 offices in 60 different markets, is headquartered in London. Some 60% of its revenue comes from its residential and commercial businesses in the UK.

The business has 70 equity partners with just two of them women.

Group chairman Alistair Elliott said: “We are pursuing a wide range of initiatives to address our business balance and have recently implemented a new training programme addressing unconscious bias and are working on a programme to effect radical change in our engagement with early careers candidates.

“Unfortunately, the current structure of our sector is such that getting to where we want to be is taking longer than we would like, but we are determined to make real progress in this area.”