Adastrum is a retained executive search firm working with private equity investors and their portfolio companies across the UK and Europe. We appoint the leaders who turn an investment thesis into delivered value.
Start Your Executive SearchMost value creation plans look credible on paper. The variable that separates the ones that deliver from the ones that disappoint is almost always the leadership team carrying the plan. The wrong CEO, a CFO who cannot scale, an operating partner who manages rather than leads, and the model breaks before the second year of the hold.
This is the part of the investment that needs the most rigour and most often gets the least. Private equity executive search is not the same as filling a permanent role at a corporate. The pace is faster, the accountability is sharper, the hold period is finite, and the people you appoint must be capable of operating without the cushioning a plc balance sheet provides. We have spent years working with investors, chairs and operating partners who understand that, and our process is built around it.
Learn More About AdastrumAdastrum partners with investors and management teams across the lifecycle of an investment. The brief is rarely identical, but the principles are consistent. The hire has to fit the value creation plan, the chair, the board, and the timeline.
Pre deal, we support due diligence on incumbent leadership and benchmark replacement options. Post deal, we run the searches that deliver the team needed to hit the plan. Our work spans mid market and upper mid market mandates, with a particular strength in technology, financial services, healthcare and consumer.
Many of our mandates come directly from portfolio company chairs and incoming CEOs who need to build the team around them. A new CEO appointed to lead a turnaround needs a CFO they can trust by week six, not week sixteen. We move at that pace.
Where a fund has a dedicated operating partner or talent function, we work alongside them as an external search resource. Our role is to extend reach, accelerate timelines and bring the rigour of a retained process to appointments that might otherwise be made on relationships alone.
Our private equity practice covers the full executive team and the senior layer below it. The roles where we are most often retained include
Private equity executive search is a separate discipline. The candidates who succeed in a PE backed business are not always the ones who succeeded in a corporate role of equivalent size. The mindset matters as much as the CV.
We assess for the things that actually predict performance in a PE backed business. The willingness to make decisions on incomplete information. The ability to operate without large central functions. The discipline to focus on the two or three things that move enterprise value rather than the twenty that filled a previous calendar. The personal resilience to hold a plan together when the first year does not go to plan.
These traits are not on a CV. They come out in structured assessment, behavioural interviewing, reference work and the conversations we have with people who have led the candidate through similar moments. We do this work as standard, not as an extra.
We follow a structured, transparent retained executive search process that balances thoroughness with pace:
Stage 1
Before we go to market, we make sure we understand the value creation plan, the board dynamic, the cultural starting point and the realistic candidate pool. We will challenge the brief where it needs challenging. A specification that does not reflect the actual job is the most common reason a search fails.
Stage 2
We map the relevant pool comprehensively, not selectively. That means the candidates already in PE backed roles, the ones in adjacent corporates who would be ready for the move, and the cross sector candidates whose track record predicts they would thrive. We approach each one personally.
Stage 3
Every shortlisted candidate is assessed using a structured framework that combines behavioural interviewing, role specific scenarios and psychometric work. The output is a written assessment per candidate that gives the investment committee a basis for comparison that goes beyond impression.
Stage 4
Most of our PE searches reach a shortlist of three to five candidates within four to six weeks. We present the shortlist with our recommendation, the trade offs between candidates, and the risks attached to each appointment. We tell you what we would do if it were our money.
Stage 5
The appointment is the start, not the end. We stay close to the new leader and the chair through the first hundred days, identify early friction, and act as an honest broker if something is not working. The cost of intervening early is a fraction of the cost of replacing the wrong hire twelve months in.
A CFO from regulated financial services often brings exactly the governance discipline a scaling consumer business needs. A COO from logistics often brings the operational rigour a healthcare platform is missing. We have seen this pattern enough times to build it into how we map a market.
That said, cross industry hiring requires judgement. It works when the underlying capability transfers and the candidate has the self awareness to recognise the parts of the new sector they need to learn. It fails when the move is made on optimism. We will tell you which one we are looking at.
The measure of a successful private equity executive search is not whether the role was filled. It is whether the appointment delivered the plan. We track our placements through the hold period and beyond. The pattern we look for is leaders who are still in role and still delivering at exit, and who go on to take the next PE backed mandate from us.
If you are preparing for a deal, working through a value creation plan, or facing a leadership decision in a portfolio company, we would welcome the conversation. The first call is straightforward. We will give you an honest view of the market, the realistic candidate pool, and what a successful search looks like for your specific situation.
Contact Adastrum ConsultingObservations from twenty years of appointing leaders into complex organisations: how a senior appointment is scoped and assessed, what separates one that compounds from one that quietly comes apart, why succession plans drift towards the most visible candidate, and what a board ought to ask before it signs off the brief.
The Collaborator is the schema you appoint to make a divided organisation move as one. It is also the one most likely to keep seeking agreement long after the moment for agreement has gone. The most dangerous phrase in a senior team is not “I disagree.” It is “let’s get everyone aligned first.” I watched a leader run a good business into a wasted quarter on that phrase, and almost nobody in the room could see it happ
The most expensive senior appointment I have watched fail had the best roadmap I have ever seen. I mean that sincerely. It was a genuinely impressive piece of thinking. Every workstream mapped, every dependency identified, governance and sequencing and risk all accounted for. The board saw it in month three and applauded. He was still refining it in month fourteen, when they let him go.
The Commander is the schema you appoint in a crisis. It is also the one you have to watch once the crisis has passed. There is a phrase you hear in big organisations when nothing is moving. "It's just how things get done here." Say it out loud and it sounds like culture. Listen properly and it is something sharper. It means someone at the top is commanding, and everyone below has quietly learned to wait.
The board thought they had found the perfect CEO. Two successful exits. A scaled multinational division. References that read like a character witness: decisive, commercially sharp, a natural leader. In the interview he was confident, fluent, convincing on growth and culture and transformation. The appointment was unanimous. Twelve months later the same board was negotiating his exit. Revenue targets had been missed.
There’s one question almost every HR-led interview process insists on. “Tell me about a time you failed.” At junior level, it sometimes earns its keep. At C-suite, it’s a junk question. And it’s almost always the wrong thing to ask in the room. I’ll explain why I won’t ask it. And then I’ll tell you what I ask instead.
Most succession planning assumes someone is ready to step up. But what happens when the obvious successor is the one who leaves? A look at why heir apparent plans fail, the real cost of an unplanned leadership transition, and how boards build genuine continuity.
