Would you pay a headhunter £15,000 to find your soulmate?

Despite the recession, dating agencies for the wealthy are booming. Rosamund Urwin on why pursuing love has become as businesslike as finding a new job
P30-31
Rex Features
3 September 2012

Any idea why Londoners spend more money on shoes than their country cousins do? According to the Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City, this spending gap (urban residents shell out 25 per cent more relative to their incomes), is caused by a function of cities: as much as they are labour markets, they are also marriage markets. So men and women invest in stilettos and brogues to up their chances of attracting potential partners.

Theoretically then, London — a magnet for singletons of both sexes — should be an easy place to meet someone to settle down and share washing-up duties with. Unfortunately, as Desperately Seeking types will tell you (sometimes at great length), it doesn’t always work out that way — a fact that keeps Match.com and its ilk booming.

As with so much of London life though, in the pursuit of love, the rich are different from you and me. And so a growing number of deep-pocketed continent- hoppers are choosing to “outsource” the soul-sapping searching and sifting elements to relationship “headhunters” — dating agencies that only the affluent can afford. To join one of the industry leaders, Gray & Farrar, will set you back 15 grand. Plus VAT.

A family-run agency based (unsurprisingly) in Mayfair, Gray & Farrar has clients in Brussels, Geneva, Paris, Monaco, New York and Dubai. Interestingly, rather than being hit by the recession, business has quadrupled over the past three years. It now has some 1,750 members, split evenly between the sexes.

According to Claire Sweetingham, head of operations and the daughter of its founder Virginia, her clients are “educated, cosmopolitan and accomplished people who meet people all the time but lack access to the right ones, who are genuinely committed to a long-term relationship”. She explains the appeal: “Confidentiality is a huge issue and they would never trawl the bars or use the internet — it’s too much of a stab in the dark and would risk their privacy.”

Operating in a similar sphere is Seventy Thirty, whose offices are in Knightsbridge, in the shadow of Harrods. It too has seen a jump in membership numbers in recent years, something its staff attribute to customers “reflecting on what is important to them” during the economic turmoil — and relationships come high on that list.

Seventy Thirty’s membership fees start at £9,500 (again, that’s pre-VAT) but climb to £50,000. It is named after what is supposed to be the ideal balance between work and personal life, which is perhaps indicative of another trait its jet-setting members have in common: minimal time. According to Lemarc Thomas, head of operations, his clients include “entrepreneurs, senior businesspeople, hedge fund specialists, those from the arts and creative professions, and those who come from wealthy and prestigious backgrounds”.

Both agencies say that clients have traditionally been the slightly older members of the singles scene (Seventy Thirty’s oldest clients are in their seventies, Gray & Farrar has some octogenarians), but that now twentysomething women are signing up in increasing numbers.

“For many of our younger female clients there is a time pressure,” says Thomas. “They have dedicated a lot of time and energy to their careers and reached a certain level of success, but then find that time is running out for them to start a family.”

There’s a demographic dimension too. For the first time, the average woman under 30 now earns slightly more than her male contemporaries. Women leave school with better GCSEs and A-levels, and are more likely to go to university and to graduate with a top degree. What most don’t want to do, though, is what would crudely be called “marrying down”. As Liza Mundy, the author of The Richer Sex, notes: “They [worry] they wouldn’t have anything to talk about.”

But what do these clients actually get for their money? At Gray & Farrar, it is all about the personal touch. Sweetingham says the service is “a way to extend a client’s social network in a dignified and extremely targeted way”. All members are vetted — and she says “decent moral fibre” is mandatory to make it onto the agency’s books.

Meanwhile, Seventy Thirty has a team of psychologists and relationship experts who matchmake members. Pretty predictably, they pair couples up based on values, lifestyle, attractiveness and what they want from life and relationships.

But there’s something creepily corporate about this type of partially-arranged marriage. And not just because the fees are listed with the acronym “VAT” next to them. Sweetingham tells me her clients “wouldn’t think twice about using a headhunter in their business and so they simply apply the same principle to their personal life”.

She also recounts the story of a man who said that before he joined Gray & Farrar, he might meet someone he was attracted to by chance “but then you have to spend many months doing due diligence to ensure this person is the right life partner”.

Due diligence, of course, is performed before corporate mergers. Effectively then, this chap joined for efficiency savings in his own life. A cost-benefit analysis told him he would be better off outsourcing the time spent trawling bars, perhaps so he could spend more time in the office. And they say romance is dead.

Perhaps one of the chief attractions of these businesses is that you are buying access to a “reassuringly expensive” club.

According to Sweetingham, the great fear among men is gold-diggers — a group the firm’s fees and vetting process would seem to weed out: “Our fees equate to a certain financial independence.”

For women, the problem isn’t necessarily meeting men, but that the ones they come across who might seem a good match are largely off-limits. Dating in the office is often frowned upon. Pillow talk with clients or rivals is dangerous.

Thomas believes there is an additional problem successful women face: “They can feel that men are intimidated by their success, intelligence and lifestyle. I hear from some clients that they have been in relationships with men who are less successful and then a power struggle develops that destroys the relationship. Men who come to Seventy Thirty respect women for their achievements.”

Perversely, both companies say they have actually been boosted by the ubiquity of internet dating because it has normalised the idea of chasing love, taking out the embarrassing element. So you no longer fear that you will look like a desperado for joining a dating agency.

“In our opinion, the mass market approach has peaked and people are getting fed-up with being bombarded with emails from dating sites,” says Sweetingham. “For those who want a serious relationship, niche services are more in demand.”

And these services clearly have advantages over the internet. The chances of misrepresentation are significantly reduced: there can be no flattering, decade-old photos (perhaps even of someone else) or euphemistic descriptions of job status.

So did the Beatles possibly get it wrong; can money really buy you love? Phillip Hodson, a fellow of the British Association of Counselling and Psychology and the author of How Perfect Is Your Partner, remains sceptical. “You know you have one thing in common, I suppose: more money than sense,” he jokes. “What you need for a relationship to work is fairly well-established: shared values. That means politics, tidiness, attitudes to extended family — it is not about income.” He points out that similar disposable incomes can be derived in different ways: “There are an enormous number of people who you could call the undeserving rich, who have perhaps inherited wealth and never had to set an alarm clock in their lives, and then there are those who’ve worked for it. Having similar bank balances doesn’t mean you have all that much in common.”

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