We all know that 2023 is far off the post pandemic highs. Deal teams, in fact all teams, worked flat out and whilst rewarding, it was also an exhausting time. Certainly, some of the biggest salary uplifts we saw during 2021/22 were for investment professionals. Firms battled hard to hire from their competitors and investment banks, who at the time were also experiencing a boom. Times have changed and it’s well known that raising capital in any part of financial services is slow going.

Indeed, Crunchbase came up with some really excellent research recently, albeit a bit gloomy. European venture funding halved in the second quarter of 2023 compared to a year earlier, and it was down two-thirds from the peak of two years ago. Funding totalled $12.4 bn in Europe in Q2 2023 – flat quarter on quarter and down 50% from the $24.7 bn invested in Q2 2022. The UK maintained it’s leading position for investments, with Germany not far behind, according to the article.

Any slowdown can be a challenging time for management. Teams who were used to being busy may find themselves with spare capacity, wondering if their competition are busier and therefore able to reward better. It can be a particularly difficult time for capital raising and IR teams, who are trying incredibly hard to find new investors. It’s key that leaders really focus in on their employee value proposition and reiterate their long-term vision.

In terms of our business, we too have seen elongated processes. Vacancy numbers are still quite high, but firms are taking longer to hire and candidate confidence is lower. The first four months of the year being the low point. Summer has been busy in terms of new vacancies and so we were surprised to see Lloyds Business Confidence Barometer being at the highest level since Russia invade the Ukraine.

The UK still remains a place of high innovation with an excellent funding eco-system and we are starting to believe that a thaw may be happening in private markets hiring.