Category: Insights

The UK Chief Information Security Officer market has shifted materially in the last twelve months, and the H2 2026 hiring pattern reflects both regulatory pressure and a reset in what boards now expect the CISO to hold. Below is our reading of the market as we enter Q3. What CISOs are now expected to hold…

The Chief of Staff to a UHNW principal is the most consequential appointment in a principal-led family office — and the one where principals most consistently get the specification wrong. Below are the five mistakes we see repeated across principal-led offices, and the archetype-fit test that would have prevented each of them. 1. Hiring for…

The board matrix — the skills-and-experience audit every Nomination Committee runs before a NED search — has changed materially in the last twenty-four months. Below is what we now see the strongest UK boards adding to their matrix as they prepare for 2026 refresh cycles. The four skills the market wants added The three skills…

The decision to run a senior appointment as a retained search or as a contingent one is the first commercial choice a hiring principal makes — and the one most likely to shape whether the appointment succeeds. Below is the decision framework we now share with every principal, Chair or CEO who asks us the…

The market for CFOs into private-equity-backed portfolio companies has been the single most active corner of UK executive search for the last thirty months. Fund vintages sitting on unrealised gains, delayed exits and a broadening range of thesis-driven bolt-on strategies have all pushed sponsor teams to reset finance leadership across their portfolios. Below is the…

The two job titles are used interchangeably across the family office market, and the ambiguity costs principals real money. Hire a “CFO” when the office actually needs a “Head of Finance” — or vice versa — and the appointment fails within eighteen months. Below is the framework we now use on every family office finance…

Board composition in 2026 is being reshaped by three converging pressures: the widening ESG competence requirement, the increased scrutiny of Non-Executive Director independence, and the still-accelerating expectation that boards look more like the markets they serve. Chairs and Nomination Committees are quietly rewriting their board matrices to reflect this — and, in doing so, are…

Family offices are not corporates. That statement sounds obvious, and yet many principals are still hiring senior staff as if they were building a mid-market business. They aren’t. And the mismatch — between the executive being hired and the environment they’re being hired into — is behind an unusually high proportion of family office senior-hire…