Private Equity

Private Equity is a major presence across the clients and industries we service, commensurate with the growth in capital raised and deployed across Australasia by local and international funds. Leaders are increasingly recognising the opportunities of a career within privately-backed businesses. We aim to help investors capitalise on this movement of talent with a range of solutions that leverage our collective capabilities as a firm.

We believe that leadership drives value – for better and worse – and can support Private Equity firms with a variety of services to attract, retain, and unleash great leadership across portfolio company management teams and boards. Often engaged by investment directors or operating partners, we utilise collective talents from across all our offerings in Executive Search and CEO Succession, Governance and Leadership Solutions in a way that is seamless and organic, evolving throughout the life of an investment.

We support on entry with research to provide external talent mapping and can form contingent lists of CEOs or CFOs to activate when a new transaction completes. This includes introducing senior advisors to deal teams, who can develop the investment thesis and provide a lens on existing management. Going further, we can provide fulsome management due diligence through a combination of interviews, psychometrics, and referencing – forming an objective view on their ability to execute relative to external options.

We support through ownership with ongoing executive and board searches. We supplement this with dedicated facilitation work to accelerate new-in-post appointments and drive executive team alignment through change. At a whole-of-fund level, we have experience running forums for portfolio companies to meet and share learnings in a structured way. These generally bring boards and management teams together but can isolate on a functional area such as the Chief People Officer, or on an interest topic like capital allocation.

Ahead of an exit phase we provide succession planning for critical executive roles and can support the formation of a new board of directors if an IPO is planned.

Our clients include buyout, growth equity, turnaround and infrastructure investors who are active across Australia and New Zealand, as well as sovereign wealth and superannuation funds with internal private equity teams.

Whether we are engaged on a specific hiring need or a more comprehensive partnership, clients can expect us to:

  1. Know the territory – since our inception in 2005, we have focused on New Zealand and Australia with the accumulated wisdom of thousands of appointments across all industries.

  2. Have a view – we provide clear recommendations on what to do and how to implement, even if this goes against our short-term interest.

  3. Understand your Investment Thesis – this is reflected in the depth of the briefing process, the research, and in the tone of recommendations. We find experts and do not believe in ‘generalist’ leaders for private equity.

  4. Share our information – we keep you abreast of people flows or deal flows that might be of interest.