Speaking before the news broke of his company's massive deal with Eastdil Secured, James Sparrow, Savills UK and EMEA's chief executive, sat down with Paul Norman, managing editor, UK and Europe of CoStar News, and Luc-Étienne Rouillard Lafond at the Mipim 2026 conference in Cannes.
He spoke about whether the market was recovering: "Last year [...] we predicted a 15% increase. And in fact that's broadly what happened. There were some challenges along the way, as you know, with the tariffs that came in and so on.
"But basically the market continued to move forward and it progressed, particularly at the end of the year where there was a very strong last quarter and that continued into this year.
"So I give you that as a backdrop that things steadily improved, not a boom, but it was incrementally better. And I think that our view is that it will get incrementally better again this year. So we're expecting it to continue to improve subject to, obviously, the world remaining reasonably normal."
Asked about the escalating conflict in the Middle East, which had worsened just before the conference started, he said: "Firstly, I should say from a personal perspective, from a human perspective, very, very sad.
"Savills has a very big operation there across the Middle East, including over 400 people in Dubai. So as you can imagine it's very challenging for us at the moment. But, setting that to one side, yes, of course it creates some uncertainty."
He added: "It's just simply too early to say. You can look at the news and depending on what time of day you and what news reel you read will give you a different view. It's just too hard to say.
"Firstly, that the local governments in the Middle East are responding quite strongly, and I think they're responding quite well. And secondly, the fundamentals of those Middle East markets are pretty strong. And historically, when these types of things happen, they've got a track record of coming back quite quickly. But I suppose the final point I would say though, is that nevertheless it does give an excuse not to make a decision. And of course, that's been an issue for the last three or four years."
To find out what he said about the UK, France and Germany, and their markets, click on the play button in the image above.