Computacenter shares have fallen 12% to a new year low after warning investors that increased demand for services will mean huge recruitment costs.

The rapid growth of IT services businesses in Europe, particularly in Germany and Spain will mean that the firm will have to take on an extra 700 staff in order to cope with demand. Computacenter had already planned to hire 500 extra workers in the second half of this year and with the new recruitments will have face £7 million in costs, wiping 10% off of expected profits for the year.

Mike Norris, CEO of Computacenter was quoted in The Guardian: “If you go back a year, [it] was growing at 1 per cent. Now it’s growing at 15 per cent. It would be fair to say that it has grown faster than I expected. Is [the £7 million] investment or for poor execution? There’s an element of both”

He continued: “If you look at Logica and BT Global Services, they’ve had to make big adjustments down the line.”