Expertise
Consulting executive search:
the ground we know best.
Where we play — and who we know when we get there. We place Partners, Principals, Directors and Managers into strategy and management consulting firms across the UK, DACH and the US, and whole teams when that is the right answer.
What we search for
Six functional practices
This is where our network is deepest. Every one of these is a practice we have placed into at Partner level — not a capability statement.
Strategy & Corporate Finance
Portfolio, corporate and the CFO agendaAI, Digital & Data
The scarcest partner group in the marketOperations & Supply Chain
Industrial credibility, heavily DACH-weightedRestructuring & Performance Improvement
Busier when everything else goes quietM&A, PMI & Value Creation
Pre-deal insight through to delivered EBITDAGrowth & Innovation Strategy
Partners who originate rather than inheritStrategy & Corporate Finance
Corporate, business unit and portfolio strategy, the CFO agenda, capital allocation and the board-level advisory that shapes long-term direction. The classic strategy engagement — and still the work firms use to prove they belong in the room.
Practice leaders with a portable book, Principals building toward partnership, and Managers from MBB and Tier 1 strategy houses.
AI, Digital & Data
GenAI and machine learning, digital transformation, data strategy and analytics. Leaders who turn technology into commercial advantage at scale rather than another proof-of-concept, and who hold the room with a board and an engineering team.
The scarcest group in the market. Partners who can sell AI work and stand behind the delivery, plus the engineering-literate tier beneath them.
Operations & Supply Chain
End-to-end supply chain strategy, logistics, procurement, process optimisation, lean and digital operations. Building resilient operations that scale — work that moved from the cost agenda to the board agenda since 2020 and has not moved back.
Heavily DACH-weighted. Partners with industrial credibility, often ex-industry, who can hold a shop floor and a boardroom in the same week.
Restructuring & Performance Improvement
Turnaround, CRO mandates, cost transformation, working capital and performance improvement. The work that gets busier when everything else gets quieter, and the practice most firms wish they had built before they needed it.
Partners with lender relationships, IDW S6 and CRO experience in Germany, and operators who sit inside the business rather than advise from outside.
M&A, PMI & Value Creation
Commercial due diligence, carve-outs and separations, post-merger integration, synergy delivery and value creation. Pre-deal insight through to post-deal performance, across both corporate acquirers and the sponsor community.
Partners with sponsor coverage, CDD leadership, and the PMI operators who convert an investment thesis into delivered EBITDA.
Growth & Innovation Strategy
Commercial strategy, pricing, go-to-market, new business building and innovation. Where firms are investing to escape commoditised transformation work, and where the margin is highest for partners who can genuinely originate.
Partners who originate rather than inherit. The hardest thing to test for in a process, and the first thing every managing partner asks about.
Where we search
Seven industry practices
Consulting firms organise by sector as well as function. So do we — because a Partner's value is usually the intersection of the two.
Industrials, Automotive, Aerospace & Defence
Automotive supply chains under sustained restructuring pressure, industrial groups rebuilding around electrification, and a defence sector absorbing budget growth it has not seen in a generation.
Partners with genuine plant-floor credibility, frequently ex-industry. In DACH this sector still hires on operational proof rather than pedigree.
Banking & Insurance
Banks and insurers rebuilding their business and operating models around AI, digital channels and cost. Consulting firms need leaders who frame that as strategy, not as an IT programme: business and operating-model design, customer and product strategy, and AI as competitive advantage.
Principals, Directors and Partners with strategy-consulting training: banking and insurance generalists, and AI and digital strategy leaders who can sell the work to a board, not just deliver it.
Private Equity & Capital Markets
A private equity community that increasingly buys consulting capacity directly. Sponsor-side diligence, value creation teams, and the operating partners between fund and portfolio, plus the exchanges and market infrastructure behind them.
Partners with live sponsor coverage and a book that travels. The one sector where a portable client list is worth more than a practice title.
Energy, Infrastructure & Transport
Transition economics, grid and network investment, large capital projects and the transport operators rebuilding around them. One of the widest gaps we see between mandate demand and available partners.
Partners who can price a thirty-year asset and still win a boardroom. Regulatory fluency matters more here than in any other sector we cover.
Life Sciences, MedTech & Healthcare
Pharma commercial strategy, MedTech growth, and payer and provider reform. Highly regulated, technically demanding, and the sector where clients are least willing to accept a partner who has read about it rather than worked in it.
Partners with therapeutic-area depth or genuine payer-side experience. Credibility here cannot be assembled out of adjacent sector work.
Technology, Media & Telecoms
Software and platform strategy, telco network economics, and media businesses restructuring around distribution. The sector where AI capability and commercial strategy collide most sharply, and where firms compete hardest over the same few names.
Partners who can sell to a founder and a regulated incumbent in the same month. Cross-over from the AI and Digital practice is constant and expected.
Consumer, Retail & Leisure
Margin pressure, pricing, category strategy and go-to-market across consumer goods, retail and hospitality. Fee rates typically sit below the industrial practices, which puts more weight on origination than on delivery pedigree.
Partners who bring their own relationships. In this sector a strong CV without a client list rarely converts into an offer.
Industrials, Automotive, Aerospace & Defence
Our deepest desk, and the most operationalBanking & Insurance
Strategy generalists and AI leadersPrivate Equity & Capital Markets
Where a portable client list beats a titleEnergy, Infrastructure & Transport
Widest gap between demand and supplyLife Sciences, MedTech & Healthcare
Credibility here cannot be borrowedTechnology, Media & Telecoms
Where AI and commercial strategy collideConsumer, Retail & Leisure
Origination matters more than pedigreeWhy firms call us
Situations we are called into
Sectors and functions tell you where we look. These tell you why firms pick up the phone. Hover any one for how we run it. If yours is on this list, we have done it before — probably this year.
You are building a practice from nothing
The first hire defines the next ten. Get the anchor Partner wrong and you spend three years unpicking it. We map who could credibly found it, and what the market for that capability looks like, before you write the brief.
A Partner is leaving and the practice is exposed
Speed matters more than perfection. The real question is who holds the client relationships, not who holds the title. We work out the difference quickly and quietly, and we map the market for that capability at short notice.
You want a whole team, not a person
Viability, cohesion and covenants tested before anyone is approached. The risk almost never sits with the Partner — it sits with the second tier who actually deliver the work and who may not move.
You have acquired a firm and the leadership does not fit
The integration hire nobody budgets for. Usually needed around month nine, usually urgent, and usually a person who can hold two cultures at once without belonging fully to either.
A DACH firm wants its first real UK presence
Or a UK firm wants Germany. We cover the UK and DACH together, which is the only way the cross-border version of this works.
Succession, and the incumbent does not know yet
The most confidential work we do. Every conversation is individual, and each person decides for themselves on their own timetable. Often the search that decides whether a firm survives its founder.
How far we reach
Grades and geographies
Two home markets, and four levels of appointment. Hover any one for what it means in practice. How a Partner-level search runs is on executive search for consulting Partners; the UK and Swiss markets have their own pages: United Kingdom and Switzerland.
Five markets. One sector.
Appointments we make
Teams
A Partner and the colleagues their commercial engine depends on — recruited as a practice, not as a person.
The role
Partner-led team moves, practice builds and talent-led acquisition support. We identify the people, relationships and delivery capability behind a growth thesis, then test whether they can succeed on the receiving platform.
Why it matters
The most consequential move a Partner can make, and the one platforms pay most attention to — a functioning team commands investment, autonomy and terms an individual hire rarely sees. The risk almost never sits with the Partner; it sits with the second tier who actually deliver the work, and who may not move.
How we search
Viability, cohesion and covenants are tested before anyone is approached. We run parallel individual searches rather than coordinating departures, and we do not advise on the enforceability of any covenant. A team move carries more execution risk than a Partner hire, and we would rather you knew that now than in month four.
Partners
Partners focussed on origination and practice leadership — commercially proven, with a client following and the credibility to anchor a practice or vertical.
The role
Equity and fixed-share appointments: origination, client following and practice leadership. Firms come to us needing a Partner who can sell, not only a Partner who can deliver.
Why it matters
Usually one of three situations — a practice with a gap at the top, a new office or country entry that needs an anchor, or a capability the firm has decided to build rather than buy. This is our centre of gravity, and the level where the economics of a move are least well understood.
How we search
Retained, and every mandate delivered personally by a partner of the firm. Where the appointment is the next Partner in waiting, the same search runs at Principal or Director level.
Directors
Senior leaders with a partner case in view — running workstreams and client relationships, often the next generation of your partnership.
The role
Principal and Director appointments: delivery leadership with early origination. The workstreams and the client relationships sit here before they sit with a Partner.
Why it matters
The level from which a firm builds its next partner cohort, and often the hire that decides whether a practice scales. For the individual it is rarely about the title — it is discovering that the track you are on does not lead there, or that the year it happens keeps moving.
How we search
We run Principal and Director searches where the appointment is the next Partner in waiting, on the same retained basis as a Partner mandate.
Managers
Managers — and high-performing Senior Consultants — the delivery engine of a practice, hired individually or in waves behind senior anchors.
The role
Engagement leadership, including strong Senior Consultants. This is the tier that turns a signed mandate into delivered work.
Why it matters
Everyone has an AI practice. Almost nobody has worked out what happens to the pyramid when a Manager and a model do what four Consultants used to.
How we search
We work selectively at this level — usually behind a Partner anchor or as part of a practice build. What we do not do is volume recruitment below that. Much of our Manager and Senior Consultant hiring happens inside the practices we help build: when a new leader lands, the team is hired in waves behind them.
What we are being asked
Six questions consulting firms are asking us in 2026
Not our capability statement — the things Managing Partners actually raise on a first call, and what we see across the market when we go looking for the answer. Hover any one for our read.
01
What does AI actually do to our leverage model?
Everyone has an AI practice. Almost nobody has worked out what happens to the pyramid when a Manager and a model do what four Consultants used to.
02
Can we still hire a Partner with a portable book?
Enforceability turns on the precise wording of a clause and on the individual’s role. It is a question of law rather than a rule of thumb, and we do not advise on it. What is knowable is how differently firms across the UK and DACH approach these clauses in practice, and that changes what is realistic.
03
Why do our DACH hires keep failing in year two?
Rarely capability. Usually a mismatch between how a UK firm sells and how German clients buy.
04
Is a team lift-out cheaper than an acquisition?
Often yes. Usually riskier than the model shows, and the risk sits in the second tier rather than with the Partner.
05
What does a Partner actually cost now?
Buy-in, guarantee, revenue credit, notice buy-out. The headline number is rarely the real number.
06
Are we losing people to industry, or to each other?
Our read is that the pattern changed through 2025. Where consultants at a given grade are actually going is one of the things we track.
Start here
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Expertise FAQ
No. Our centre of gravity is Partner and Principal or Director, but we work at Manager level too — usually behind a Partner anchor or as part of a practice build. What we do not do is volume recruitment below that.
The six functional practices and seven industry practices set out above. They reflect where our network is deepest rather than a capability statement, and a Partner’s value is usually the intersection of the two rather than either on its own.
Those are our home markets. We also cover Switzerland and wider Europe actively, and we run searches into the United States mainly for European firms building American practices, and the reverse.
Fees are paid by the hiring firm, always. We never charge a candidate a fee, and we do not require anyone to buy or use any other service as a condition of working with us. Mandates are retained; the structure reflects scope, jurisdictions and confidentiality.
A Partner hire is typically two to five months to offer. Anything involving several appointments takes longer. Notice periods then sit on top, and at this level they are frequently three to six months.
No, and we would be wrong to try. Enforceability is a question of law turning on the precise wording of a clause and on your role. We ask every candidate to take independent legal advice from a solicitor of their own choosing before accepting an offer, and we neither select, instruct nor pay that adviser.
Yes. Everything you tell us is treated as confidential and is not disclosed to any client or third party without your prior consent. We also do not ask candidates for client lists, pipeline information, colleague contact details or remuneration data belonging to their employer, and we will not accept it if offered.
Usually, yes. A good deal of our work starts as a market conversation rather than a mandate — what a practice would cost to build, who is genuinely available, what the competition is paying. There is no obligation attached to that.