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Acertitude Appoints Managing Partner To Lead New London Office And Fuel Global Growth
Acertitude announced that Guy Barnes has joined as Managing Partner to fuel global growth and launch a new office in London, a strategic location representing the second largest executive search market in the world and a gateway to the wider European market. Working closely together with Co-Founders Kevin O’Neill and Rick DeRose, Guy will help drive the continuing evolution and international growth of the firm. Based out of Acertitude’s London and New York offices, Guy will lead the firm’s global Business and Professional Services practice and co-lead its global Private Equity practice.
In parallel, the firm added three new consultants in London to solidify its international capabilities and serve a rapidly growing list of clients in Europe and beyond. The European expansion builds on Acertitude’s continued growth, stemming from its extraordinary client relationships worldwide, with a 32% YOY growth rate, +82 net promoter score, and ranking as one of the Top 50 Recruiters by Hunt Scanlon, and among the top ten fastest growing.
“Rick and I are delighted that Guy has joined the Acertitude leadership team. From our first meeting in 2012 in London, it was evident that we shared similar values and a belief that executive search can and must do better. While Rick and I set out to build Acertitude, Guy’s career took another path. Great ideas have a certain gravitational pull, which in this case brought the three of us back together to build upon our early successes and truly transform the industry that we all love," said Kevin. "Guy is an extraordinary executive search leader, recognized throughout the industry and among top CEOs and business leaders in the world for his ability to connect organizations with game-changing talent. And perhaps more importantly, his distinctive ability to build cohesive search teams singularly focused on serving clients and candidates integrates well with Acertitude’s vision for global growth.”
Guy Barnes has over 20 years of executive search and assessment experience, working as an advisor to boards and CEOs seeking exceptional leaders in the business and professional services and industrial sectors. In addition, he has extensive experience serving private equity clients pre-and-post deal, across a broad range of portfolio companies globally. Private equity is a core competency for Acertitude, representing over 60 percent of the firm’s engagements.
Most recently, Guy worked as managing director at Russell Reynolds Associates, where he led the Business & Professional Services practice from London and was a partner on the Industrial and Private Equity teams. Guy previously founded, grew, and successfully sold a leading specialist executive search firm to a global, NYSE-listed competitor. Prior to executive search, he worked in the insurance and motorsport industries.
Guy also serves as a non-executive with InMotion Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital and incubator business, investing in high growth companies in the mobility and smart transportation sector.
“It is genuinely a delight to be working with my friends Kevin and Rick. When all three of us originally met, we found that we shared a common vision for what a reimagined executive search firm should and could look like — a firm of the very highest quality and integrity and with the client and the candidate at the heart of everything,” said Guy. “There is a clear — and underserved — gap in our industry for organisations able to sincerely match the confidence, insight, and calibre of the established global firms whilst offering the creativity, agility, and humanity of the disruptor. This gap is even more evident today. In Acertitude, Kevin and Rick have invested and created just that platform and their success is evidenced through market-leading growth and, more importantly, client loyalty and fabulous candidate feedback. I’m tremendously excited to be working alongside them to deliver on the vision that we originally shared, and take ownership for the firm’s global expansion.”
Tim Cook has joined Acertitude as partner, bringing more than 20 years of executive search and assessment experience from Egon Zehnder and Russell Reynolds. He is highly specialized in CIO, CTO, CISO, and cyber recruitment, having invented a maturity model for cyber security leadership. In addition to focusing on IT officers, Tim will lead C-suite engagements around the world for clients in the business services, consumer, industrial, and technology industries.
Oliver Staple has joined as principal with over 10 years of consulting and global executive search expertise. He will lead executive searches in both Europe and the U.S., focusing on corporate officers for business and professional services, financial services, consumer, technology, and private equity firms that are looking to unleash ambitions for restructuring, growth, and digital transformation. Most recently, he was a consultant in Russell Reynolds Associates’ Corporate Officers practice and was at a specialist financial services executive search firm beforehand. Oliver first launched his career as a corporate lawyer with a U.S. law firm.
James Kenyon has joined as principal and splits his time between London and New York. At Acertitude, James leads assignments for global functional leaders to ensure private equity portfolio businesses have access to the best global leadership. He has more than a decade of global consulting and leadership advisory experience, most recently as a consultant and member of Russell Reynolds’ Corporate Officers, Financial Officers, and Private Equity practices. Specializing in private equity, James has a successful track-record of advising clients both pre- and post-deal across Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia.
Together, the highly capable London team is set to connect businesses with the best and brightest leaders around the world, bringing deep insights into the landscape and trends advancing the business and professional services, financial services, industrial, private equity, and technology sectors. As is the case with all Acertitude consultants, they share the same fundamentals around working with extreme commitment, agility, and powerful accuracy — and the same belief in serving the greater purpose of unleashing human potential through their work.
