The Burnout Problem in High-Pressure Finance Roles - and Why It's Getting Worse
Something is shifting at the top of the finance industry. For years, exhaustion in investment banking, private equity and M&A was treated as an occupational hazard — the accepted cost of some of the best-paid, most competitive roles in the City. What our latest research shows is that this cost has become so widespread it is now actively reshaping where senior dealmakers choose to work, and how firms need to compete for them.
Croft & Co's Inside the Minds of Dealmakers 2026 report, an independent survey of 100 senior finance professionals across the UK earning in excess of £100,000, found that burnout is close to universal among the market's most senior talent. Ninety-five per cent of respondents reported experiencing some level of burnout, and three-quarters said they had considered leaving a role because of it. Separate research from Mental Health UK's Burnout Report 2026 points to a similar picture across the wider UK workforce, with 91% of adults reporting high or extreme pressure at work over the past year — so what we are seeing in finance is an intense, senior-level version of a much broader trend.
The headline for candidates and employers alike is the same: burnout is no longer a private struggle people quietly absorb. It is now one of the clearest drivers of who moves, who stays, and who wins the fight for talent.
Why so many senior dealmakers are on the move
Our research found that 67% of senior professionals are more likely to consider changing roles than they were two years ago, and 51% say they are likely to move within the next 12 months. That is a striking level of mobility at the most senior end of the market, and burnout is a major part of the explanation — but not the whole story.
What is most interesting is how the profile of an attractive opportunity has changed. Compensation still matters: 61% of respondents said they would move for a higher salary. But 51% said they would leave for better work-life balance, and 53% for stronger long-term financial rewards such as equity or profit share. More than a quarter had turned down a role because it did not offer the right deal exposure or a meaningful career step, and 28% said they would accept a lower salary in exchange for stronger deal opportunities.
As our founding partner Alex Croft puts it: "Senior candidates are still highly ambitious, but they're also thinking carefully about trajectory, sustainability, leadership and long-term opportunity." Ambition hasn't gone anywhere. What has changed is that senior professionals are applying much sharper scrutiny to whether a role is one they can actually sustain — and they have the market leverage to be selective about it.
The retention lever most firms are underusing
For employers, this creates a real opportunity, not just a risk. Ninety-one per cent of the professionals we surveyed said work-life balance was very or extremely important to them, and 58% said better work-life balance alone would be enough to make them stay in their current role. That is a lower bar than many firms assume: retaining a majority of at-risk senior talent may come down to workload design and leadership quality as much as it does to pay.
Leanne Elliott, a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and co-host of the podcast Truth, Lies & Work, notes in the report that "burnout has become a badge of honour" in high-performance cultures, which means the warning signs are often missed by both individuals and organisations until someone hands in their notice. Part of the fix, she argues, is structural: managers account for roughly 70% of the variance in employee engagement, yet around 82% of new managers in the UK have received no formal leadership training — a gap that is especially acute in finance, where technical excellence is routinely mistaken for leadership ability.
Our consultant Kate Brown sees this play out directly in the market: senior dealmakers are "evaluating the overall quality of an opportunity, not just the headline package," looking closely at leadership, deal flow, team dynamics and progression potential. Firms that can speak credibly to all of that — not just compensation — are increasingly the ones winning the best candidates.
What this means if you're weighing your next move
For the senior professionals in our survey, this data offers a kind of validation: if you are feeling stretched, you are very much not alone, and the market has never been more receptive to professionals who are ready for a platform that offers stronger deal exposure, better leadership, or simply a more sustainable pace. Two-thirds of respondents told us they remain extremely or very confident in the deal market, so this is not a moment of retreat from ambition — if anything, it is a moment where the most in-demand talent has real room to be selective.
As our partner Felix Hasted puts it, the conversation firms need to have with their people is evolving from "how much are we paying people?" to "what kind of career experience are we asking people to sustain?" That is exactly the conversation we have with both candidates and clients every day — helping senior dealmakers find platforms that match their ambition with a working environment they can actually sustain, and helping firms understand what it now takes to attract and keep the people they need most.
Croft & Co's Inside the Minds of Dealmakers 2026 report surveyed 100 senior finance professionals across investment banking, private equity, M&A, corporate finance and corporate development in the UK, all earning in excess of £100,000, in April 2026. The research was conducted independently by Research Clever.
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