Fees for recruiting senior employees at Lehman Brothers are at the centre of a High Court dispute between the bank and Sheffield International, the headhunter.

A £1.4m (€2.3m) lawsuit casts a revealing light on how the relationship between an investment bank and a headhunter can go wrong. Filed in May, it cites the bank's failure to pay Sheffield for hiring Alan Broughton and Jacques-Henri Gaulard, two highly regarded banking analysts recruited from Morgan Stanley last year.