Heidrick & Struggles has topped a ranking of City of London headhunting firms earning the most money from investment banks and asset managers over the past year – a challenging period in which executive search providers saw revenues fall by a quarter.

The rankings, published by Executive Grapevine in its annual UK Retained Executive Search Industry Report, placed Heidrick & Struggles top for fees earned from global banking and markets clients - which includes buyside firms. A 6.2% market share put it narrowly ahead of rival executive search firms Russell Reynolds, with a market share of 6.1%, and Egon Zehnder, which had 6%.