The View from the Office

I met up with Michael Nelson, a managing director at Sheffield Haworth, a London-based executive search firm, at the Regency Bar & Grill for lunch. 

Whenever I eat at the Regency I’m reminded that it was the place where the Power Breakfast started. The year was 1975 and Bob Tisch, Loews Corporation Co-Chairman and Co-CEO, invited the business elite to meet up to focus on solving the city’s fiscal woes. 

Fifty years later, the Power Breakfast is still a thing, though the younger crowd has moved downtown to places like Balthazar.

Michael and I met up to talk about executive recruiting and the demand for Wall Street financial professionals, especially fixed-income traders. I had the Margarita pizza; he had the burger without a bun. We both had iced tea. 

Michael joined Sheffield Haworth last September to head global markets in the Americas, which focuses on hiring fixed-income and equity professionals for sell-side banks. The firm is a boutique that competes with Korn Ferry, Russell Reynolds, Spencer Stuart and others. 

Executive recruiting — like so many industries — is at an inflection point because of the increasing use of AI to find and evaluate talent. For decades assignments were made based on long-standing relationships. The economics of the business have also changed. 

One of the things we talked about was the challenge facing older executives who are increasingly caught up in force reductions. Another was the value of building and maintaining a network and staying visible, in particular by leveraging social media. 

I told Michael that it was my sense that among Wall Street professionals women have often been more effective using social media to raise their visibility. 

A lasting impression from lunch was how many genuinely curious questions Michael asked. He wanted to know all about my career and experiences at Bloomberg and in particular how it came that I started writing this View from the Office series. 

You can reach out to Michael via LinkedIn or send me a DM for a warm connection.