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The best executive search firms are also the worst executive search firms.

That is the trick. The bigger their client roster, the more impressive they look in the pitch. Then you hire them and discover half the market is suddenly wrapped in velvet rope. Current client. Former client. Recent slate. Candidate already shown to someone else. Firm won’t touch them. Partner

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That is now half the value creation plan.

Same initiatives. Same consultant slides. Same “quick wins.” Same CRM project that somehow takes longer than building the Channel Tunnel. Same AI strategy where the first use case is still “summarise this meeting” because apparently Outlook was too emotionally demanding. Bain says private equity firms are now sitting on roughly

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The executive search market has its own little cartel, and at least it has the decency to wear a suit.

Five firms dominate senior leadership hiring globally. Spencer Stuart. Heidrick & Struggles. Russell Reynolds. Egon Zehnder. Korn Ferry. SHREK. Together, they cover most of the Fortune 500 and place roughly half of all C suite mandates globally. Which is quite funny when you remember that boardrooms spend months pretending they

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Somewhere around 2019, every PE firm became "operationally focused."

It tests well in LP meetings. Looks good on the website. Makes the whole operation sound very hands-on and very sophisticated. Then you talk to the portco CEO. I have spent enough time on both sides of this conversation to know the gap is not accidental. It is structural.

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Most PE strategy decks could change logos unnoticed.

I have seen the same "differentiated thesis" slide in enough IC presentations to qualify as a recurring medical condition. Buy-and-build. Operational improvement. Digital transformation. Professionalise management. Accelerate growth. Expand margins. The colours change. The font changes. Occasionally someone adds a diagonal line and calls it a

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Brookfield's $12.5 billion of carry has spent years almost arriving.

Brookfield's release is headlined 15% earnings growth. Consolidated net income fell 33%. Between the two sits $12.5 billion of unrealised carry, of which the firm converted $121 million after selling $40 billion of assets.

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Every year you sit on committed capital, your IRR math gets worse.

The industry calls it dry powder and treats it like optionality. We have $3.7 trillion in uncommitted capital waiting for the right deal. Sounds prudent. Sounds disciplined. Sounds like a fund that will not overpay. It is also a ticking fee clock. LPs are paying management fees on committed

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Every partner went to the same five schools and worked at the same three banks.

Who exactly is bringing the differentiated insight? PE has a cognitive diversity problem and it has nothing to do with demographics. It is about pattern matching. The entire industry hires from the same pipeline, trains people in the same models, promotes the same profiles, and then wonders why every firm

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Increasingly, the most honest question in private equity.

Because the model used to be beautifully simple. Buy a decent business, add leverage, wait for multiple expansion, sell it to the next optimist in a fleece vest. A proper industry. Lovely manners. Terrible incentives. Now the hangover is starting to look a bit less fun. Bain says the backlog

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The AI discussion in most PE board meetings follows the same script.

Someone mentions AI. The CEO says they are "exploring opportunities." A board member asks if they should hire a Chief AI Officer. The operating partner suggests starting with a use case. Everyone agrees that is sensible. Nothing happens for six months. I have spent the last year looking

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Same disruption. Four very different panic responses.

McKinsey is compressing the pyramid. Fewer people, more Lilli, more outcome-based fees. The strategy is basically: protect the advice layer and use AI to make the machine underneath less embarrassingly bloated. BCG is scaling. More people, more India, more BCG X, more AI-tied revenue. It is treating AI

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The biggest risk in private equity isn't leverage. It's believing the story you wanted to hear.

Every deal starts with a story. The founder tells you the business has another decade of growth ahead of it. The banker tells everyone there are twenty buyers circling. The management team says the ERP implementation is almost finished. The GP tells the LP this fund is different. Nobody is