The most profitable and the highest paying financial services headhunting firms in London

We've been writing a lot about the recent performance of investment banks. Based on their most recently available accounts, we'd also like to draw your attention to the recent performance of leading financial services search firms.

Unfortunately, not all search firms file full accounts with Companies House and those that do, don't do so particularly regularly or at the same time of year. The figures below are therefore somewhat out of date; given the lack of hiring this year, the situation is likely to have deteriorated considerably.

Nevertheless, with these caveats the figures are interesting. They show that financial services headhunting is not a particularly profitable business: even in 2011 many of the leading firms made a loss; the most profitable firm achieved a margin of a mere 9%. And yet, if you're working for a financial services search firm life can be quite lucrative. The highest paid director at Sheffield Haworth, the most profitable search firm in our list, made £632k last year. Across the firms we looked at, average compensation seems to average £100k+.

Correlate 

Year ended 31st March 2011 

Turnover: £3.4m

Loss: £6k

Number of employees: 15

Average compensation per head: £125k

CT Partners

Year ended 31st December 2011

Turnover: £8.9m

Loss: £2m

Number of employees: 49

Average compensation per head: £133k

Rice and Dore

Year ended 30th September 2011

Turnover: £4m

Profit: £250k

Number of employees: Not provided

Average compensation per head: Not provided

Sainty Hird

Year ended 31st December 2011

Turnover: £8.1m

Profit: £270k

Number of employees: 17

Average compensation per head: £97k

Sheffield Haworth

Year ended 31st December 2011

Turnover: £17m

Profit: £1.5m

Number of employees: 112

Average compensation per head: £102k

Highest paid director earned: £632k