Continuation vehicles are on track to account for a third or more of private equity exits within two years. For the sponsor, it is a liquidity solution. For a management team that thought it was nearing the finish line, it is a second hold period beginning with no change of ownership to mark it —…
Portfolio companies are being asked to find twelve percent annual EBITDA growth in a market that used to reward five. Investors are answering with AI-driven value creation programmes — and quietly discovering that the leadership team in place was never assessed for the one capability the plan now depends on. Every private equity conversation now…
With average hold periods stretching past six years and a record backlog of unsold companies, the industry is treating 2026’s exit slowdown as a liquidity story. Inside the business, it is a far more immediate problem — the leadership team hired to deliver a four-year plan is now three years into work nobody originally asked…
Most private equity investors underestimate how significantly leadership quality affects operational outcomes — and overestimate how quickly a wrong hire can be corrected. This report examines the patterns we observe across industrial portfolio companies: where leadership gaps most commonly appear, what drives them, and what the cost of delayed action looks like in practice. Private…
PE portfolios consistently outperform when led by executives who have operated — not managed — in comparable environments. This report examines what separates operators from administrators and why most search processes are not designed to find them. Put two CVs side by side and, on paper, they can be almost indistinguishable. Same title. Same sector….
Due diligence processes routinely scrutinise financial performance and operational infrastructure. Leadership quality — whether the management team can perform under new ownership — is assessed far less rigorously, and far later than it should be. By the time a business is six months from a sale process, its data room is usually forensic. The quality…
Leadership failures in the period immediately after close are rarely about competence — they are almost always about context, alignment, and the absence of a clear mandate defined before the executive arrived. The executive who fails in the first ninety days after an acquisition is, more often than not, genuinely capable. They have a track…
The CFO profile that works in a public company rarely works in a PE-backed environment. The gap between what investors think they’re hiring and what they actually need is one of the most consistent sources of leadership failure we observe. The pattern is familiar to anyone who has sat through enough post-acquisition leadership reviews. A…
The operators who can genuinely move the needle in a PE-backed manufacturing business are almost never on the market. Understanding why — and what it takes to reach them — is the difference between a search that delivers and one that doesn’t. Clifford Nash Executive Search · Industrial & Private Equity When a private equity…