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Issue 04 · July 2026
The Opportunity in a Quieter Market
Salary data from 20,000+ finance professionals
Live roles · Market insights · Expert commentary |
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Welcome to the Harper May newsletter, a fortnightly 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. |
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Market Intelligence
What We're Seeing Right Now
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Exclusive Data
Salary Spotlight
Based on 20,000+ data points from our candidate database, benchmarked against the Finance Pay Index, our live crowdsourced UK salary survey. Add your own numbers to unlock the full picture. |
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Benefits Benchmark
Average package across senior finance respondents
From our latest salary survey of senior finance professionals, figures shown are the cohort average. |
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Deep Dive
How Can Mid-Market Firms Attract Elite Finance Leaders Against Multinational Competition?
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Most mid-market businesses we work with face the same quiet frustration: the finance leader they want is comfortable at a listed PLC or a multinational, and the pitch to join a £30m to £150m business doesn't land the way it should. The usual levers, title inflation, a vague promise of equity, the word 'entrepreneurial', rarely move the needle with someone who already has options. What does work is more specific and more structural. Operational scope that a large-company FD would wait five years to touch. Equity mechanics that are genuinely aligned to a hold period. A board that can articulate what the finance leader is being hired to change, not just manage. Our latest piece breaks down how mid-market firms, particularly PE-backed ones, can build a credible, competitive offer that wins talent away from bigger competitors without simply outbidding them on base salary. Read the full piece →
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AI in Finance
One tool. One habit. No hype.
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Every tool now claims an AI feature and most of it is noise. The uses that actually earn a finance leader's time are narrow: reading long documents faster, and never trusting a number you can't trace back to its source. That's where NotebookLM earns its place. Point it at a 60-page board pack and it will summarise it, answer questions on it, and show you which page each answer came from. Ask what changed between two versions of a model and it will tell you. Its audio overview turns a dense report into a ten-minute listen for the commute. The usual caution applies on anything sensitive or client-confidential, so mind what you upload. But for turning long, dull documents into something you can actually interrogate, it's the highest-value free tool out there right now. |
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Hiring a finance leader and want to know what good AI fluency looks like in interview? Reply to start the conversation, we run that one regularly.
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Now Hiring
Live Roles
We're working on 8 live vacancies across London, refreshed daily. |
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Planning a senior finance hire in Q3? Start the conversation now.
This is one of the best windows in years to secure a top finance leader: less competition for the strongest people, and more of them open to the right move. The best shortlists are built before the role goes live. If you have a mandate forming, or want to pressure-test your compensation positioning against our 57,305-profile dataset, reply to this email and we'll set up a 20-minute briefing call.
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The Harper May Team
Senior Finance Recruitment +44 (0)20 3900 1811 You're receiving this because you applied for a role through Harper May or shared your CV with us. No hard feelings if you'd rather not hear from us.
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