Where once-moneyed burghers snoozed over brandies and grumbled through cigar smoke at the falling price of cloth, the metropolitan business elite are taking a more proactive approach to hard times.

Sipping lattes in a former Victorian gentleman’s club now reinvented as a business hub, they stab at their BlackBerries, tweeting and texting their way to the next deal.

David Criddle, who spent the past three years restoring this Grade II-listed building in the centre of Leeds, from where he runs the exclusive LS1 members’ club, sits amid the hubbub and grins. “There is a recession on, honest,” he says. But behind the smiles Mr Criddle is aware that the credit crunch poses a particular threat to recently regenerated cities.

Leeds offers a snapshot of the state of professional life outside London. The city’s renaissance has been based largely on the financial services and property industries, both of which have been hit hard by the recession. The Leeds Financial Services Initiative estimates that 20 per cent of the city’s workforce and 27 per cent of its output (£12.9 billion in 2008) are accounted for by financial services companies. The region is home to the largest number of financial services organisations outside London. But a recent survey by the Centre for Cities policy think-tank estimates that the recession could cost Leeds as many as 28,000 jobs by 2011. More than a third of these losses will be in financial and related business services.

With executive redundancies running at a seven-year high, Mr Criddle is concerned that many top-end executives may leave the city. Thus, it is to support the region’s beleaguered business community that Mr Criddle has launched a kind of executive support package. The Metier passport scheme is a combination of career coaching, psychological support and networking opportunities. At £3,000- £4,000 a year it is not aimed at those on their uppers, but at top-level executives affected by the recession.

“It is not only those who are made redundant that need support,” he says. “Redundancy also takes a huge emotional toll on those making the layoffs and on the survivors left behind, who may have to deal with feelings of guilt and an increased workload.” The package comprises a year’s membership of the club, with its various networking resources, intensive one-to-one career coaching, a personal adviser, peer group workshops, professional and personal development courses and business networking events. It’s a far cry from signing on at the local job centre. “A job centre is going to be very alien and of limited value to someone who has been a company director,” according to Mr Criddle.

Peter Bluckert, managing director of PB coaching and one of the career coaches used in the Metier scheme, spends much of his time helping clients come to terms not only with their reduced circumstances, but also with their diminishing status in the eyes of the world.

“There are people in financial services who now feel like social pariahs,” he says. “They need to find some coping strategies to deal with that. But when you are at the top of an organisation it is very easy to get isolated. It’s difficult to express what might be perceived as weakness to your peers or your competitors. That’s where an independent career coach can help.”

Elsewhere in the city, other employment specialists are focusing on the plight of high-earners. Corpex Group, an executive recruitment company, has launched seminars in Leeds, London and Birmingham to help unemployed senior managers back into work. Guy Newton, the managing director, is optimistic that few will be out of work for long: “A lot of very talented people have been left in the cold by the collapse of the banking system, but most have transferable skills

that can be used in other sectors. High-earners have little in the way of targeted resources to draw on and these seminars and workshops will tackle that.”

It is not quite a job centre, but it seems there is some reassurance to be found, when you lose your high-powered, high-paying job, in somebody saying: “Join the club.”

All change

Case study: Michelle Render

Eighteen months ago Michelle Render was a high-earning marketing director. Now she is redundant.

“In 2007 I couldn’t recruit people quickly enough,” she said. “Our Leeds office swelled to over 100 people and we opened up offices in Manchester and Nottingham. Then things began to slide very quickly. We had to lay people off, closed the Manchester office and three months later closed Nottingham. Having spent so long getting things off the ground, it was absolutely heartbreaking.”

Then early last year Ms Render became aware that her own job was under threat. Coaching helped her to think of alternative roles she could play in the company and, when her redundancy was confirmed this year, she returned to her coaching notes. She saw eight possibilities, from starting a family to going back into corporate work to setting up her own business. “In the end, I turned to my network of contacts and have had four offers of project work. Now I’m going somewhere sunny for a week. When I get back, I’ll be starting a portfolio career.”

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