Welcome to the Harper May newsletter, a regular snapshot of the UK senior finance hiring market, written by the people who do the placements. No fluff, no filler. Just what we're seeing, what it means, and roles worth knowing about.
UK Finance, This Month
A new Chancellor's first Budget lands on 28 October
John Healey, Chancellor since July, delivers his first Budget on 28 October, with the OBR's forecast published the same day. It is also the first fiscal event of Andy Burnham's government, and the Institute for Government expects very little room for new spending. If you are finalising 2027 budgets or a pay review, it is worth holding the numbers until after the 28th.
Rates held at 3.75%, but three votes for a rise
The Bank of England held Bank Rate at 3.75% on 17 September, with three of the nine committee members voting to raise it to 4%. Inflation reached 3.1% in August and the Bank now expects it to pass 4% early next year as energy prices feed through. In August the question was whether a cut would come this year; now the risk is a rise. The next decision is on 5 November.
The annual report is up for its biggest rewrite in a generation
On 7 September the government published proposals to replace most of the strategic report with five baseline disclosures (business model, performance, resources and relationships, strategy and principal risks), to drop the explicit legal requirements to report on environmental, employee and social matters unless they are financially material, and to replace the capital maintenance rules for dividends with a solvency based test. The consultation closes on 30 November.
The FRC says reporting quality is holding, and names where it still asks questions
The FRC's Annual Review of Corporate Reporting, published on 29 September, found FTSE 350 reporting quality maintained, the gap with smaller companies narrowing, and fewer reviews leading to substantive questions for the second year running. Where it did write to companies, the most common areas were cash flow statements, financial instruments, impairment, fair value and revenue. Worth reading before your year end review.
See where your own salary sits: add it to the Finance Pay Index → It takes two minutes and is anonymous.
Broken down by location, ownership and company size from the Finance Pay Index, with anything too thin to trust left out. If you are budgeting for a CFO hire, it is the number to start from.
Deep Dive: Are You Hiring an Overqualified or Underqualified Finance Leader?
One of the most common mistakes we see in senior finance hiring isn't picking the wrong person. It's picking the wrong altitude. A PE-backed business at £30m revenue hires a Group CFO from a FTSE 250, expecting transformation, and gets someone who hasn't built a reporting pack from scratch in fifteen years. Equally, a founder at £80m promotes a strong FC into a CFO seat because they trust them, only to find the board conversations and investor management require a different skillset entirely. Both are expensive. Both are avoidable.
This piece walks through how to calibrate seniority properly: how to spot the step-up candidate who is ready versus the one who is merely keen, and how to tell when a corporate veteran's experience will translate versus when it will just slow things down. It draws on the patterns we see in the senior finance hires we work on, and is written for anyone about to sign off a finance leadership hire.
AI in Finance: One Tool. One Habit. No Hype.
This issue's tool: Gamma. Paste in a brief or upload a document and it builds a structured, designed presentation in about a minute, which you then edit. Exports to PowerPoint and PDF.
Most finance leaders know what they want to say to the board. The time goes on turning it into slides: the structure, the order, the twenty minutes spent lining up text boxes. That is the part Gamma takes off your hands.
Give it your commentary on the quarter, or the paper you have already written, and ask for a ten slide board summary. You get a draft with a sensible running order in a minute. It will not get your numbers right on its own and you should not ask it to: the value is in the structure and the first draft, not the figures.
The habit worth building: write the story first, in plain sentences, then let the tool lay it out. If the story does not survive being turned into ten slides, it was not clear enough for the board either. One caution: exported PowerPoint files flatten some layouts into images, so if your house template matters, use it for structure and rebuild the final version yourself. And as with any external tool, mind what you upload.
Hiring a finance leader who will own the board pack? Reply and we will tell you what to test for in interview.
Salary ranges by level from Accountant to CFO, from the Finance Pay Index. Company size, private equity ownership and London move senior pay far more than which qualification you hold, and the annual rise will not close a gap: the median was 3%.
Live Roles
We're working on 8 live vacancies across London, refreshed daily.
Chief Financial Officer, Retail, City of London, £150k to £165k
Finance Manager, Financial Services, City of London, £65k to £75k
Finance Analyst, Technology, City of London, £55k to £60k
Finance Analyst, Manufacturing, City of London, £45k to £50k
Management Accountant, Media & Communications, City of London, £40k to £45k
Planning a Senior Finance Hire for Q4 or Q1?
If you have a CFO, FD, Head of FP&A or Financial Controller role live or in planning, reply to this email. We will come back with what the market looks like for your brief, what it will cost and how long it is likely to take, before you go live.