Hotel Developers (Lanka) Limited , owners of the Colombo Hilton, expects tourism and related business such as airline crews billeted in hotels to slow down in the first quarter of the current year had said that it was too early to speculate how fast this business segment will recover.

This was the company’s response to the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) that had sought information on how the tsunami had affected the business of quoted companies.

The Hilton owners said that their hotel had not sustained any structural damage and in that respect can be considered as operating normally. "It is however a different matter to establish in what way this natural disaster will affect the business levels for the first quarter of 2005," the company has said.

In the same way two quoted finance companies, Arpico Finance and Alliance Finance, have reported that while there was no direct damage caused to their companies as a result of the disaster, they both expect to know within two weeks whether there was damage to items and vehicles leased by the company.,

A third quoted finance company, LB Finance, has reported that their Galle branch had suffered damage assessed at around Rs. 1 million.

This branch had a deposit base of Rs. 38 million, leases of Rs. 45.9 million, hire purchases of Rs. 25.2 million, mortgage loans of Rs. 0.7 million and fixed deposit loans of Rs. 0.8 million, the company has reported.