What Sets High-Performing Financial Services Teams Apart Today
The European deal market has split in two. In 2025, global M&A values rose 36% while the number of deals barely moved, up just 1% — we can identify a "K-shaped" recovery in which a small band of large transactions did almost all the work. Megadeals above $5bn jumped 76%, from 63 to 111 in a single year (PwC, Global M&A Industry Trends: 2026 Outlook, January 2026). The pattern is even sharper in our specialist markets. Across EMEA, deal values climbed 19%, megadeals nearly doubled and close to half of those were in financial services itself, as banks and insurers consolidated (PwC, January 2026).
That matters for anyone building a team, because it tells you where the pressure is concentrated (and where it's not – PE LBO deals). When growth comes from a thin layer of complex, high-stakes deals rather than broad volume, performance is no longer about having capacity. It is about having the right people, organised the right way, led consistently, and still in their seats a year from now. Headcount is (relatively) easy to buy. We've seen this manifest in a huge increase in demand for UK Takeover code bankers, for example.
Our view, after years recruiting into investment banking in London and Paris, is that the industry systematically overpays for the hire and underinvests in most things that come after. The four factors below are where that gap shows up most.
1. Clarity of purpose and roles
Strong teams operate with a clear understanding of objectives and responsibilities. Individuals know what is expected of them and how their work contributes to broader outcomes. This clarity reduces duplication, speeds up decision-making, and matters most precisely when the work is hardest – on the complex, multi-party transactions now driving the market.
The evidence backs this up at the level of the firm, not just the team. Gallup's meta-analysis of more than 100,000 work units finds that the teams with the clearest sense of what they are there to do will tend to deliver 23% higher profitability and 18% higher productivity than the least engaged (Gallup, The Benefits of Employee Engagement, updated February 2026). Clarity is not a soft virtue. It is a measurable input to margin.
2. Balance of skills and perspectives
High-performing teams are rarely built on a collection of identikit professionals. They combine technical expertise with commercial awareness and the communication skills to carry a client through a difficult process. That balance lets a team interpret information critically, challenge its own assumptions, and respond to complexity with confidence rather than bravado.
This is also where hiring strategy and team design meet. UK finance hiring rose 13% in 2025, with banking accounting for 61% of all finance vacancies and London growing 17% (Morgan McKinley / Vacancysoft, January 2026). But a market that is hiring selectively rewards firms that know exactly which capability gap each hire closes — not those simply adding to the bench. The question is never "Can we attract talent?" It is "What is missing from this team, and who completes it?"
3. Consistent and aligned leadership
Leadership is the single largest controllable variable in team performance and often a weak point amongst leadership in banking teams. Consistency in direction, decision-making and expectations creates the stability that demanding environments require, and teams reflect the quality of the leadership above them.
The data here is striking. Gallup attributes 70% of the variance in team engagement to the manager alone (Gallup, February 2026) "People don't leave bad jobs; they leave bad managers.' McKinsey, tracking organisational health over two decades, finds that healthy organisations deliver three times the total shareholder return of unhealthy ones. It defines health largely as how consistently leaders run the place (McKinsey, Organisational Health Is (Still) the Key to Long-Term Performance, February 2024). In a search context this has a blunt implication: hiring a strong individual into an inconsistent leadership structure is a poor use of money. The challenging environment will dislodge the talent faster than the talent can lift the environment.
4. Retention and development as a performance strategy
Sustained performance requires continuity. Teams that keep their key people and invest in developing them hold their standards over time; frequent turnover breaks momentum and erodes effectiveness even when the individual talent is strong.
The cost is concrete. Gallup puts the price of replacing an employee at half to twice their annual salary, and the Center for American Progress finds replacement costs reaching as high as 213% of salary for senior and specialised roles (CAP, 2012) — which is to say, for exactly the front-office bankers this industry competes for. Disengagement compounds the loss: Gallup estimates it costs the global economy $8.8 trillion (Gallup, 2023). Retention is not an HR line item. For a desk built around a handful of senior relationships, losing one person can cost more than a year of that person's pay and reset the team's momentum at the same time.
The point for employers
The challenge is not assembling talent — in a market where Paris now ranks as the EU's leading financial centre and London hiring is climbing again, talent is available to those who pay for it. The challenge is creating the conditions in which talent performs consistently: clear roles, a complementary mix of skills, leadership people can rely on, and a real reason to stay.
In a brokered industry, almost everyone can source a strong CV. Far fewer can tell a client honestly whether the team they are joining – or building – is one where that CV will actually deliver. That judgement, not access, is what now separates the firms that hire well from the firms that simply hire.
Sources: PwC, Global M&A Industry Trends: 2026 Outlook (January 2026); Morgan McKinley / Vacancysoft, UK finance hiring (January 2026); Gallup, employee engagement and turnover research (2019–2026); Center for American Progress, business costs of employee turnover (2012); McKinsey & Company, organizational health (February 2024); Paris Europlace, Paris financial centre data (2025).
