Architect racks up near £3m personal expenses bill
Zaha Hadid’s popularity among clients in Asia and the Middle East continues to grow with the firm’s combined workload in the two regions up by nearly a fifth.
The Middle East remains the single biggest market for the business with the region accounting for 41% of the firm’s turnover, according to the latest report and accounts of Zaha Hadid Holdings which have been filed at Companies House.
Work in the region edged up by just over £1m in the year to April 2015 but its revenue from Asia was up by a third to just under £17m.
Overall revenue was up 4.4% to £49.6m with pre-tax profit up 6% to just over £6m.
The results also reveal Hadid herself racked up personal expenses of nearly £3m – from just over £900,000 last time – which were paid for by the group while the company also settled a personal tax bill of £161,000 on her behalf.
Among the schemes the practice is working on in Asia is a 45-storey mixed-use tower in Beijing while elsewhere in the Chinese capital it has designed the world’s largest passenger terminal at the Beijing New Airport Terminal Ðǿմ«Ã½.
Workloads from the US were down from £4.4m to £3.7m while the firm’s UK business accounted for just £442,000 of revenue – down from the near £1m last time, with its high-profile, new maths gallery at the Science Museum in London due to open later this year.
In a statement accompanying the accounts, Hadid, who last week was formally awarded this year’s Royal Gold Medal by the RIBA, said: “ZHG achieved notable successes in established, developing and new global markets, while its completed worldwide projects demonstrate an on-going commitment to the highest standards of design, construction and sustainability.â€
The number of staff at the business slipped slightly to 401 from 418 but its wage bill went up from £15m to £16.9m.
The accounts also reveal that the company paid an interim dividend of just over £1m. Accounts for its main subsidiary, Zaha Hadid Ltd, show that it paid an interim dividend of £4m.
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This story first appeared on Ðǿմ«Ã½ Design
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