Our financial services practice places the people who are accountable for a firm’s numbers and its risk: chief financial officers, chief risk officers, treasurers, finance directors and the leaders of investor relations. Clients range from banks and insurers to asset managers, payments firms and high-growth fintech preparing for a listing or a sale.

These are regulated roles, and the hire has to satisfy a board, an audit committee and often a regulator as well. We build that into the search from day one. Candidates are assessed against the senior managers regime or its local equivalent before they reach a shortlist, and we flag any approval timeline that could delay a start date. We have advised on more than thirty CFO appointments made ahead of an IPO, so we know what investors and underwriters will look for in a finance team.

Clara Lindqvist leads the practice from London, working closely with partners in New York on transatlantic searches. Every brief is calibrated against current pay data, so clients go into an offer knowing where the market sits. Nearly all of the people we place are still in the role a year later, and many of them come back to us when they build their own teams.