Hooked on the City, and given a leg-up by Yellow Pages, he earned £1.3m last year

Clare Hutchison

HEN Gary Elden arrived in the City in the Eighties, he couldn’t have been further from the pinstripe- suited, pinkie ring- spor ting stereotype the insurance industry had become known for. Instead, he boasted Jamaican heritage, a Camberwell council-estate upbringing and an education from the university of life rather than the Russell Group.

Where he felt he stood out most was in the bar, not the boardroom. “My friends were mainly black so we used to drink things like rum and coke. I remember going to the pub and asking for a Malibu and pineapple, and they looked at me like I was mad.” Elden, now chief executive of global recruitment company SThree, eventually developed a liking for lager but could never quite get a taste for bitter.

He was, however, hooked on life in the Square Mile — hardly a surprise, given what it took to get him there. As a teenager, he faced the disruptions of life in SE5, and his teachers’ apathy. “It was a rough area — there were iron gates on doors, urine in lifts, graffiti everywhere, killings. I remember glue sniffers… the National Front parading past where I lived. My school was a mad school, very ethnically divided. I was in all the top classes and captained all my sports teams. But no teacher ever said to me ‘you can be somebody’.”

Elden’s father, one of the first black Londoners to drive a black cab, suggested he learn a trade and be selfemployed. But “I wanted to work for a bank, to work in an office. It always looked good. You’re in a suit, your hands are clean. You earn l ots of money”. At 16, he joined a Camden architecture practice.

His meagre £3200-a-year job caused bewilderment back home. “I was surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurs — but entrepreneurs in an illegal way — so I didn’t ever want to go that route because the idea of being incarcerated scared me. I kept thinking ‘It’ll come, it’ll come’.” (He was right: last year, his pay packet was worth £1.3 million.)

Next, he sought a foot in the financialservices door. About 120 applications, 28 interviews and many rejections later, he got a job in insurance as a claims technician. “It introduced me to a different world and I loved it. But I got an opportunity to go broking as well and s t i l l noticed there was a divide. I decided I needed to get into a job where what I put in was what I got out.”

Inspiration came during a house hunt when he eyed his estate agent’s Golf convertible. He picked up the Yellow Pages — “I was quite shallow back then” — and landed an interview and then a job at a franchise of Winkworth. Everything clicked and he became one of the chain’s youngest-ever managers.

In around 1990, a BMW caught his eye at a wedding. The owner worked in IT recruitment. With phone directory again in hand, he found Computer Futures, SThree’s precursor, and a new profession — the “one thing I c an remember being the best at”. Lessons from founders Simon Arber and Bill Bottriell, who respectively taught him discipline and entrepreneurial flair, softened the blow of a pay cut and the loss of his prized company car.

Within five years, he had launched Huxley Associates, SThree’s first banking rec ruitment operation. It was named after Brave New World author Aldous Huxley because it sounded “old school, conservative and middle class”. A decade later, Elden was strategy chief before moving across the pond to grow the US business, which now accounts for 20% of profits.

He got the keys to the boss’s office in the company’s Monument headquarters three years ago. Wearing an openn e c ke d shir t and s u r ro u n d e d by pictures of his heroes Muhammad Ali and Pele, the shaven-headed 48-yearold is clearly at home. He has a casual air for a chief executive, and you can easily make out the south London tones as he jokes with colleagues.

He’s also remarkably at ease considering the Brexit spanner that was lodged in the works of UK recruitment. He had already warned of tough conditions in banking and finance as clients put off hiring decisions in the run-up to the vote. SThree’s share price is down by almost a quarter so far this year.

“In the short term, Brexit will have an impact but it’s not going to be as bad as the banking crisis of 2008,” he says. “That was the worst market I have ever seen and we rode that pretty well, so I think we can ride this out.”

Despite Elden’s confidence and what he describes as “decisive” action from Prime Minister Theresa May, he is pushing through a productivity initiative, including heavy investment in technology, to ensure utmost efficiency. He has also ruled out expansion into more countries or industries and will instead redeploy resources away from shrinking sectors or markets to brighter prospects such as fintech, life sciences, Germany and the US.

But he is convinced SThree has two aces up its sleeve. There’s its service: staff are no longer judged solely on bills but on a “net promoter score”, which measures what extra effort has been made for clients. “If you’re a superstar on bills but on the way have caused so much collateral damage, that’s not good enough,” he explains.

Then there is the “intrapreneurship” programme, created by Arber and Bottriell, which gives budding stars a chance to invest in a business they run or set up. One employee moved from Holland to San Francisco to establish SThree’s life HOULD he decide to shred his trusty Yellow Pages, Elden is likely to do something involving charity work. He is already on the board of the Powerlist Foundation, which runs a leadership programme for high-potential young people from underprivileged backgrounds. He’s proud of it, and hungry to grow the scheme further.

That doesn’t mean he has no time for fun: “I work hard and I know how to go out and play as well.” He has a fullon family life — a son and two stepdaughters from a previous marriage and two daughters with current wife Victoria, whom he met at SThree. He has an Arsenal season ticket, though he’s itching for Arsene Wenger to go.

He claims to be “too old” for clubbing in London, but you might find him in West End restaurants such as Novikov or Lima. Ibiza is a different story — he has a house there and loves open-air club Ushuaïa.

Elden’s permanent home is still in south London, but with an SW10 postcode — he barely recognises Camberwell and Brixton, and rarely goes back. He seems more than content with his current lot, but could another flash car lure him away? “I don’t drive at the moment. The District and Circle line is my transport from Gloucester Road straight to the office.”

Looks like his dream of City life is still alive and well.