The personal touch

Nathan North, ‘Eurobuild CEE’: Since you’re visiting us here today, how important is this market and your Polish branch in terms of your overall activities? Jeremy Helsby, group chief executive, Savills plc: This is a big market for us – and we now have over 100 people here. Poland is very important and Warsaw is one of our largest operations in Europe, where we see lots of opportunity for growth. Our philosophy works here: we’ve always said that we don’t want to be the biggest – we want to be the best. We are not aiming to be the biggest in terms of size, but certainly to be the best when it comes to quality. “We’re not a sausage-machine!” – is what I say to our clients. We advised on the Redefine and Echo transaction, which was the biggest deal of its kind in the history of the Polish real estate market. So we very much punch above our weight. However, we’ve still got some way to go, since we are relatively you