The Counter-Offer Playbook

A senior finance professional we spoke to last month accepted a £25k uplift to stay. Six months later, they're back on the market. The role hadn't changed. The boss hadn't changed. The reasons they wanted to leave hadn't changed. Only the salary did — and that wasn't the problem.

This is the pattern we see again and again, and it's worth being honest about what counter-offers actually solve, and what they don't.

Across our placements over the past quarter, when a senior candidate hands in their notice they're typically being counter-offered with one or more of:

At the senior level (£100k+) we've seen multiple offers in the 20–25% range for Heads of Finance and FDs whose departure would create real organisational disruption.

The recruitment industry quotes “80% of people who accept counter-offers leave within 6 months.” It's a bit of a myth — the actual evidence is more nuanced. CEB data suggests around 50% leave within 12 months, which sits closer to what we see in our own placement data.

But the underlying point holds. The reasons people decide to look elsewhere — limited progression, a difficult manager, lack of strategic involvement, cultural drift — rarely get fixed by a salary increase.

There's also a less-discussed dynamic: once you've signalled you were willing to leave, that often changes how senior leadership views your trajectory. A counter-offer keeps you in the building, but rarely on the same career path.

London market data, triangulated from 280 London FD profiles in our database, our 2026 candidate salary survey, and published benchmarks (Robert Half, Glassdoor, Morgan McKinley).

What we're seeing: Mid-market and PE-backed businesses (200–500 employees) command a real premium — often paying as much as much larger enterprises for the right FD. Financial Services and Real Estate sit clearly above the median; consumer-facing sectors typically trail by £20k+. Bonus and equity at the senior level can add another 15–30% on top.

A common question — and one with a more interesting answer than “raise the budget.”

The senior finance professionals at the top of our London network rarely move for money alone. The strongest signals we see candidates respond to, in order:

In practice, a well-structured £125k role with a credible mandate and an engaged CEO will often beat a £150k role at a business that doesn't know what it wants.

IFRS 18 takes effect for accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2027 — but listed and PE-backed businesses are starting prep work now. The headline change: a new structure for the income statement, mandatory disclosure of management performance measures (MPMs), and tighter rules on aggregation and disaggregation.

The practical question for finance leaders right now isn't technical readiness — it's narrative readiness. MPMs will need to be reconciled to IFRS measures and explained publicly. That's a significant communication shift, particularly for businesses with bespoke KPIs that have grown up organically.

If you haven't already, this is the quarter to start mapping which non-GAAP measures will need formal disclosure, and what the story around them will look like.

A selection from our current 99 active mandates.

That's the part of the market most job boards don't reach, and most internal hiring processes never see. Quiet conversations, long relationships, the right brief landing at the right time. It's most of what we do.

If you've got an open finance role and you're wondering whether to widen the search — or you'd just like a 15-minute view of the senior talent currently available in your sector — that's a conversation worth having.