Beer and pizza is out. Wellness is in
In a transactional world, relationships matter more than ever
Hello Rainmakers,
When Paul Billingham first sat down with me to plan a round table, the obvious theme – particularly for a firm like Knight Corporate Finance – would have been private equity trends or tech investment opportunities. Instead, Paul chose wellness.
By the end of the session, that call looked less like a left‑field idea and more like an astute reading of where business culture is heading. He pointed out that this was not only the best‑attended of their round tables so far, but also the kind of topic that clearly resonates beyond the room.
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Corporate entertaining, staff development events, and networking is changing.
Beer and pizza is out. Wellness as a relationship strategy, is in.
It’s not a soft add‑on, but in the transactional world of corporate finance, relationships matter more than ever, oddly.
Partly, the reason the old formula of late‑night drinks, pizza and the odd day at the races no longer works is that the workforce is drinking less and asking more from employers. The growth of Knight’s MediaCity run‑throughs, padel tournaments and mixed‑format days with breathwork, yoga and cold‑water sessions reflects a simple shift: people want to meet, connect and build trust in ways that are healthy, purposeful and – crucially – memorable.
His takeaway was that wellness now sits at the intersection of talent, culture and business development. If firms want to recruit and retain the next generation, they need to offer more than a bar tab; if they want deeper client relationships, they need to create shared experiences that feel authentic rather than performative. In that sense, the Knight / K3 wellness round table wasn’t a detour from the usual private equity narrative – it was a reminder that the real value in any deal still depends on the wellbeing, connections and longevity of the people behind it.
I’ve chaired a lot of round tables over the years – on private equity, regional funding gaps, real estate, professional services, tech, you name it. They can be lively, combative, occasionally revealing. But this one, held in K3’s offices under the banner of “wellness”, was the most quietly provocative I’ve done.
Partly that’s because wellness is one of those slippery words that can mean everything and nothing. On the one hand: cryo chambers, red‑light therapy and breathwork. On the other: getting up a hill with a few mates. We had both ends of that spectrum – and most things in between – around the table.
What struck me first was how personal the answers were when I asked everyone to introduce themselves and say what wellness meant to them.
There was Grace Matthews, a solicitor at JMW and health and wellbeing director for the Manchester Young Solicitors Group, who has essentially turned her own love of fitness into part of her job. She talked about hosting Barry’s Bootcamp sessions and padel mornings where young lawyers and other professionals swap suits for shorts.
“The buzz in the rooms that we’ve seen has been just like a Thursday night pre‑lockdown in a bar,” she said, “because everyone’s got a shared experience to talk about. Everyone’s endorphins are flowing.”
For Heather Walsh, senior executive assistant at Palatine Private Equity, the change has been both cultural and deliberate. Palatine, she said, remains a high‑performance firm in a high‑pressure sector – but its internal temperature has cooled.
“Pre‑Covid it was all pub quizzes and drinks,” she admitted. “Post‑Covid we started asking our people what they actually wanted. The staff engagement surveys were clear – they wanted walks.”
Palatine started small, with informal lunchtime and after‑work walks. It has since evolved into a twice‑yearly staff walking programme and an annual adviser walk:
“We’ll map a route somewhere nice, invite our advisers and contacts, and just go and walk together. We’re still networking, we’re still doing business, but we’re also prioritising wellness. The conversation is very different at the top of a hill than at the end of a bar.”
