Retained headhunting for executive search firms in Financial Services
Ninth Space is a retained headhunting practice focused on Partner-level hiring across executive search and leadership advisory, with a strong Financial Services bias.
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We work with professional and executive search firms, leadership advisory platforms, and search-led professional services businesses on Partner-level appointments, senior consultant hires, practice build-outs, succession situations, and confidential market engagement.
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Our focus is on senior search professionals who are not actively looking, not visible through obvious channels, and not usually moved by generic approaches.
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Ninth Space exists for firms that want the senior search market engaged properly, discreetly, personally, and with context.
Focused on Financial Services search and advisory markets
Ninth Space operates across the global Financial Services search ecosystem.
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Our coverage spans asset and investment management, private markets, private credit, hedge funds, banking and capital markets, insurance and reinsurance, FinTech, wealth management, private banking, real estate and real assets, and the risk, regulatory, legal, compliance, governance, finance, technology, data, digital, and corporate functions that support these markets.
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This focus provides visibility across the firms, practices, people, and platforms shaping senior Financial Services search.
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It allows us to understand where capability is strong, where gaps are emerging, where succession pressure is building, and where senior search professionals may be open to the right conversation at the right time.
Direct conversation, personal representation, and traditional headhunting
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Ninth Space is phone-first by design.
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We do not rely on mass LinkedIn approaches, generic InMails, speculative email campaigns, or junior-led outreach.
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Senior people are rarely moved by templates. They are moved by credibility, timing, context, discretion, and live conversation.
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For clients, this means the market is engaged properly, senior-to-senior, with control over message, timing, and approach.
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For candidates, it means representation, not distribution. Names are not mass-marketed, circulated speculatively, or pushed into the market by email. Each conversation is selective, personal, and handled with judgement.
Perspective built over almost three decades in executive search
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Ninth Space was founded by Steven Salter, drawing on almost three decades in executive search across the United States, the United Kingdom, and international Financial Services markets.
That perspective has been shaped by building and leading search businesses, working with senior search professionals at key career decision points, and operating inside private equity environments where leadership, performance, and value creation are closely connected.
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The practice reflects that experience: retained, discreet, phone-first, and built around proper representation rather than market distribution.
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For Ninth Space, senior hiring is not simply a process. It is a commercial, reputational, and leadership decision that depends on timing, judgement, discretion, and direct engagement with the right people.
Ninth Space
71-75 Shelton Street, London, WC2H 9JQ5
Email: contact@ninth.space
“We are a signatory to HM Government’s Voluntary Code of Conduct for Executive Search Firms.”
