LONDON (ShareCast) - A quieter year for London property developer Safeland is no bad thing despite lower revenues, as it returns to a safer financial footing and recovers from frauds carried out by its former Finance Director.

Chairman Raymond Lipman, whose son Larry Lipman is Managing Director, said the year had still been a busy one for the company as it acquired short term development opportunities in North London and looked to push the portfolio towards sales.

With fewer transactions, revenues almost halved from £15.1m to £8.6m in the year to end-March, with operating profits of £0.5m down from a re-stated £1.6m.

As the company discovered losses due to a series of fraudulent transactions carried out by former Finance Director Paul Davis were so significant, the board has restated the figures for the previous year to reflect the loss of funds.

Misappropriated funds recovered and applicable legal fees were treated as a net income of £0.8m in the current financial period, which helped the company produce a £1.03m pre-tax profit, compared to the fraud-affected £0.03m profit last time.

Lipman Snr said the company had so far recovered £1.3m and was continuing to pursue outstanding monies and had appointed former Quintain Estates accountant Colin Stone as the new Finance Director.

He added Safeland was in a strong position to move forward after it agreed terms for a new three year revolving credit facility of £12.5m to provide cashflow and leverage to finance future opportunities as the market improves.

Shares in Safeland were up 8.2% at 16.5p at 12:41 on Monday.


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