Practice

Private Equity

The world’s leading private equity (PE) firms generate tremendous shareholder returns.

While their investments are not immune to headwinds, they continue to outperform many of the major indices. Without question, much of this success is due to the early identification of outstanding investment opportunities. However, once purchased, the investment must perform. Our experience suggests that the astute equity investor will carefully manage and drive the performance of their investments with a team of seasoned and talented operating partners – people who have a clear view to future success and a track record of leading businesses effectively.

So how do they do it? How can businesses outperform their competition, create value, and realize lasting success? By observing our most successful clients, we have identified several business disciplines that PE owners apply to form a framework for success. While these fundamentals may sound basic, they are not easily achieved.

Let’s take a closer look:

  • They hire senior managers who act like owners
  • They define a clear 3 to 5-year investment thesis and business strategy
  • They make their capital work hard and measure Return on Invested Capital
  • They measure other important value creating activities with an effective dashboard
  • They determine whether senior management is adding or destroying value

Clearly, the first and last items on this list involve finding the right talent to lead the business.

What We Do

Over and again, we hear the following:

  • Equity investors are uniquely time constrained – they value urgency
  • Equity investors often actively manage investments – they value and demand high performance
  • Equity investors measure and reduce risk – they value managers with a strong track record
  • Equity investors focus on results – they want managers who win routinely and overcome obstacles

At August Leadership, we view these challenges as an opportunity. We know where to find the right executives, can assess their potential for success in all circumstances, will properly market the PE opportunity to extremely talented passive candidates, and execute our searches with great speed.

Our Expertise

  • Talent Assessment and Due Diligence
  • Talent Mapping and Pipeline Development
  • Retained Executive Search expertise across multiple industry sectors within a portfolio of businesses

Practice Team

Asad Haider

Founder & CEO

As an innovator, Asad has founded and now leads August Leadership, one of the fastest-growing Executive Leadership Search Firms.

Piers Marmion

Advisor

Piers is a Cambridge graduate who following an early career in family office private equity has spent over 25 years in leadership roles in the human capital sectors as a founder entrepreneur, CEO, board Director and investor.

Peter Grech

Partner

Peter has over 20 years of experience in an executive search spanning several continents. His expertise includes Insurance, Financial Services, nonprofits, Human Capital, Digital Transformation, Data Analytics, and Risk Management.

Christine Sobhani

Partner

Christine Sobhani brings over 20 years of recruitment experience to August Leadership. She is a leader in the talent acquisition and talent management space with a focus in HR and leadership roles across industries.

Claudia Seidner

Partner

Claudia Seidner has many years of experience recruiting for challenging leadership roles in large corporate groups and medium-sized companies. Her focus industries include transportation, tourism and logistics, IT and telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, life science, and renewable energies.

Gavin O' Malley

Partner

Gavin has been working in executive search for the last 13 years, having previously spent 10 years in international and local marketing roles at Unilever.

Carilyn Quigley 

Partner

Carilyn has started and grown two executive search firms in her search career. These search firms focused in a range of different markets which is the reason that Carilyn now successfully executes senior appointments across a wide range of industries.

Eugenio Riquelme

Partner

Eugenio has deep practical experience as a search consultant and leadership advisor at both public and private boards, C-suite, and business heads level, mainly in the financial sector and financial function in various industries.

Lukas Beech

Partner

Lukas Beech is one of the most influential search consultants in Asia, with about 20 years of deep expertise, especially in the Korean market.

Michael Maeder

Partner

Michael is Cofounder & Managing Partner of August Leadership in China and IOT ONE, a global IoT consulting practice.

Dr. Bruno Weidl

Partner

Bruno is a highly experienced and recognized Executive Search/Coaching Consultant, Non Executive Director and serial entrepreneur.

John Purkiss

Partner

John has over 25 years’ experience in executive search. He set up and ran the CFO Practice in Heidrick & Struggles’ London office, and was promoted to Partner. Since then he has recruited senior executives and board members for a wide range of companies.

Claire Lawson

Partner

Claire has spent seventeen years in Executive Search and focuses on leadership positions in Consumer, Industrial and Professional Services.

©2023 August Leadership. All rights reserved.