CEO Recruitment and Executive Search
Hire a Chief Executive Officer
Exec Capital is a specialist CEO recruitment agency and executive headhunter placing Chief Executives with UK businesses across every sector. We conduct permanent CEO searches, interim CEO appointments and fractional CEO placements, each led personally by Adrian Lawrence FCA. Appointing the right Chief Executive is the most consequential decision a board makes — the CEO sets strategy, leads the senior team, manages investor and stakeholder relationships, and ultimately determines whether the business reaches its potential.
Every CEO search is led personally by Adrian Lawrence, with access to the senior networks and referral relationships that determine whether a shortlist is genuinely market-reflective. We work with founders, boards and investors at growth-focused and investor-backed businesses across every sector. For larger and mid-market appointments we work on a retained basis; for smaller and earlier-stage companies we offer contingency search with the same standard of candidate assessment and the same personal lead.
Tell us about your hire | Call us on 0203 834 9616
Adrian Lawrence FCA — Founder, Exec Capital
Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales | CEO and C-suite placements since 2018 | Good Business Charter accredited
Adrian Lawrence is the founder of Exec Capital and leads every CEO search personally. The Chief Executive appointment is the most consequential decision a board makes — the individual who holds the role determines whether the business achieves its potential or falls short of it. There are no junior consultants at Exec Capital, no handoffs, and no database searches. Every CEO mandate is a retained executive search conducted by Adrian Lawrence from briefing to appointment. To discuss your CEO requirement, call 020 3834 9616.
CEO Executive Search: Our Approach
Exec Capital operates as a retained CEO executive search firm, not a database search service, and not a multi-consultant firm where your search is handed to a junior team after the first meeting. Every CEO search begins with a structured briefing conversation with Adrian Lawrence, typically on the same day or the next working day. That conversation establishes the business context, the board dynamics, the ownership structure, the CEO mandate, the cultural requirements, and what a successful appointment looks like at twelve, twenty-four, and thirty-six months.
From that brief, Exec Capital conducts a research-based executive search — identifying the specific individuals whose CEO track records match the mandate requirements, approaching them directly and confidentially, and building a shortlist within three to seven working days. This is not a posting-and-screening exercise. Every candidate on the shortlist has been personally assessed by Adrian Lawrence against the specific brief before being presented.
Exec Capital’s retained CEO search model produces a materially better appointment than contingency CEO recruitment. Contingency recruits for availability; retained search recruits for fit. The difference shows in the quality of the shortlist and the durability of the appointment.
The Institute of Directors and the Financial Reporting Council’s UK Corporate Governance Code set out the governance expectations for CEO appointment processes across UK businesses. The BVCA publishes guidance on CEO leadership in PE-backed businesses where the appointment is typically the most value-critical decision made in the first months of ownership. Exec Capital’s mission is become the UK’s leading Executive Recruitment Agency.
Who Will Lead Your CEO Search
CEO Executive Search: Our Approach
Exec Capital operates as a retained CEO executive search firm — not a database service, and not a multi-consultant firm where your search is handed to a junior team after the first meeting. Every CEO search begins with a structured briefing conversation with Adrian Lawrence, typically the same day or the next working day. That conversation establishes the business context, the board dynamics, the ownership structure, the CEO mandate, the cultural requirements, and what a successful appointment looks like at twelve, twenty-four and thirty-six months.
From that brief we conduct a research-based executive search — identifying the specific individuals whose CEO track records match the mandate, approaching them directly and confidentially, and building a shortlist within three to seven working days. This is not a posting-and-screening exercise. Every candidate on the shortlist has been personally assessed by Adrian Lawrence against the specific brief before being presented.
The retained model produces a materially better appointment than contingency CEO recruitment. Contingency recruits for availability; retained search recruits for fit. The difference shows in the quality of the shortlist and the durability of the appointment. The Institute of Directors and the Financial Reporting Council’s UK Corporate Governance Code set out the governance expectations for CEO appointment processes across UK businesses, and the BVCA publishes guidance on CEO leadership in private-equity-backed businesses, where the appointment is typically the most value-critical decision made in the first months of ownership.
Who Will Lead Your CEO Search — Adrian Lawrence FCA
Adrian Lawrence FCA is the founder of Exec Capital and leads every CEO search personally. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and has placed permanent, interim and fractional Chief Executives with UK businesses across technology, financial services, professional services, manufacturing, healthcare and PE-backed sectors since founding Exec Capital in 2018. His background as a qualified finance professional gives the CEO practice a distinctive rigour in candidate assessment: the executive who can articulate a compelling vision but cannot manage a P&L, build a management team or hold investor confidence is not a CEO who will succeed. There are no junior consultants, no handoffs and no database searches — every CEO mandate is a retained search conducted from briefing to appointment.
Adrian Lawrence FCA | Founder, Exec Capital | ICAEW Verified Fellow | ICAEW-Registered Practice | Good Business Charter accredited | Companies House no. 15037964
Types of CEO Engagement We Place
Permanent CEO
A thorough retained search for a full-time Chief Executive — appropriate where the board wants a considered, high-quality appointment with a shortlist built specifically for the mandate rather than drawn from available candidates. Permanent CEO searches typically produce a shortlist within three to seven working days and complete within six to ten weeks of instruction. For PE-backed, regulated or highly sector-specific mandates the timeline is discussed and agreed at briefing.
Interim CEO
A defined-period CEO appointment — appropriate for an unplanned departure, a governance situation requiring independent leadership, a PE transaction requiring management continuity, or a permanent search that needs to be run carefully rather than under pressure. We can present initial interim CEO candidates within 48 to 72 hours for urgent mandates.
Fractional CEO
A part-time CEO arrangement — appropriate for businesses that need CEO-level strategic leadership and external authority without the scale to justify a full-time appointment, typically one to three days per week on an ongoing basis. Most commonly placed with businesses between £1m and £8m revenue where the founding team needs experienced CEO-level challenge and direction. See our fractional CEO service for the full model.
When Businesses Need to Recruit a CEO
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Founder succession.
Transitioning from founder-as-CEO to a professionally managed business is one of the most significant and consequential leadership changes a company makes — and one of the most frequently delayed. Exec Capital has specific experience placing CEOs into founder-led businesses where the cultural sensitivity of the transition, the founder's continuing involvement, and the new CEO's relationship with the founding team are all as important as commercial credentials.
Private equity investment.
PE investors make the CEO appointment one of their first priorities in the months following a transaction — either confirming the incumbent, upgrading the existing team, or appointing a new CEO better suited to the PE growth plan. An experienced CEO with PE portfolio track record who understands the reporting cadence, the operating partner relationship, and the pace of delivery PE ownership requires creates value from month one. Exec Capital has an active network of CEO candidates with verified PE portfolio experience. See our private equity recruitment capability.
CEO departure.
Planned or unplanned CEO departures create an immediate governance and commercial risk. For unplanned departures an interim appointment maintains leadership continuity while the permanent search is conducted carefully. For planned retirements and successions a proper CEO succession process — led by the Chairman and board with external search support — produces a materially better outcome than an internally managed appointment made under time pressure.
CEO succession planning.
Boards that identify and develop internal CEO succession candidates — and validate them against the external market through a properly run search — make better permanent appointments and face fewer governance crises than those that address succession only when a departure forces the issue. Exec Capital supports boards in designing and running CEO succession processes that serve both governance and commercial objectives.
Growth stage transition.
The CEO who built the business from zero to £5m is frequently not the right CEO to take it from £5m to £25m — different skills, different management approach, different investor and stakeholder relationships are required at each stage. Exec Capital has specific experience placing CEOs at growth stage transition points where the mandate requires a commercially validated assessment of what the next phase requires rather than a repetition of what the last phase delivered.
What Makes CEO Recruitment Different
CEO recruitment is categorically different from every other executive search. The CEO has no line manager within the business — they report to the board, which provides governance oversight but rarely has the operational intimacy to assess performance until a problem becomes visible. That makes the quality of the initial appointment more consequential than any other hire, because the cost of a CEO mis-hire — in financial performance, management-team stability and investor confidence — is measured in years rather than months.
The qualities that distinguish an exceptional CEO appointment are also harder to assess from a CV and interview than for any other role: strategic clarity, the ability to build trust with a board while retaining the authority to lead the executive team, genuine resilience under sustained pressure, and the commercial instinct to decide well with incomplete information. Assessing these requires a search process that goes beyond credential-matching. Where the mandate calls for a broader general-management profile, our managing director recruitment practice covers that adjacent ground.
Our CEO assessment — led personally by Adrian Lawrence for every mandate — covers verified track record in comparable businesses, the quality of previous board and investor relationships, specific commercial outcomes delivered (versus those that merely occurred during a tenure), management-team development and succession, and the cultural and leadership fit for the specific business and board.
CEO Headhunters:
How Exec Capital Reaches the Right Candidates
The best CEO candidates are not browsing job boards. They are leading businesses and being approached through trusted networks rather than advertised vacancies. Our CEO headhunting approach identifies these individuals — executives who are not actively looking but represent the ideal fit for the mandate — and approaches them directly and confidentially on the client’s behalf.
This is the difference between a CEO headhunter and a CEO recruiter. A recruiter processes candidates who come to them; a headhunter identifies and approaches the specific individuals who should be considered, whether or not they are actively looking. The best CEO appointments — particularly for specific sectors, growth stages or ownership contexts — almost always require the headhunting approach.
CEO Recruitment Agencies: How We Compare
The CEO recruitment agency market spans large generalist firms, boutique specialists and contingency recruiters. Exec Capital sits firmly in the specialist retained-search category focused exclusively on C-suite and board-level appointments, conducting every search as a retained mandate, and led personally by Adrian Lawrence rather than a team of consultants juggling concurrent searches.
The questions worth asking any CEO recruitment firm before instructing: who personally leads the search, what their track record is in comparable businesses, how they source candidates, and what their assessment methodology is beyond interviewing. Our answers are consistent and verifiable.
“Exec Capital has supported SBS Insurance Services over the past three years through the provision of a Fractional FD/CFO. Their expertise has made a significant difference in professionalising our finance function and delivering accurate, timely management information—exactly what our business needed to grow with confidence.”
Tracey Rees, COO, SBS Insurance Services Ltd
Sectors We Recruit CEOs For
We recruit CEOs across a broad range of UK sectors. Those where we have the deepest candidate networks and the most frequent mandates include:
Technology and SaaS
CEOs with experience of scaling technology businesses — from Series A through to exit — including the commercial-model transitions, engineering-team leadership and investor relations each stage requires.
Financial services and regulated businesses
CEOs with regulatory literacy, FCA or PRA supervised-entity experience and the governance discipline regulated firms require. SM&CR awareness is a baseline expectation for CEO candidates in regulated contexts.
Private-equity-backed businesses
CEOs who have operated in PE-owned businesses and understand the value-creation-plan discipline, the operating-partner relationship and the pace of delivery PE ownership requires. This is the single most frequent context for CEO appointments at Exec Capital.
Professional services
CEOs able to lead partner-led or expertise-driven businesses, with the credibility to lead senior professionals, the commercial instinct to drive growth and the governance discipline to manage a partnership or board structure.
Consumer, retail and industrial
CEOs with brand, customer-experience and commercial P&L experience in consumer-facing businesses, and CEOs with operational excellence and supply-chain leadership for manufacturing, industrial and distribution businesses with large operational teams.
How the CEO Search Process Works
Step 1 — Briefing. A structured conversation with Adrian Lawrence, typically same-day or next working day, covering business context, mandate scope, candidate requirements, timeline and process design. The output is a written brief that forms the basis of the search and the assessment criteria.
Step 2 — Research and identification. Active research to identify the specific individuals whose CEO track records match the brief — a structured mapping of the relevant executive talent pool, not a database search. This typically takes three to five working days.
Step 3 — Approach and assessment. Identified candidates are approached confidentially by Adrian Lawrence. Those who express interest are assessed against the brief — track record, leadership capability, cultural fit and specific mandate requirements — before being shortlisted.
Step 4 — Shortlist presentation. A shortlist of typically three to five candidates is presented to the board with detailed profiles, assessment commentary and a recommendation on fit — usually within three to seven working days of brief confirmation.
Step 5 — Interview support and appointment. We support the board through interviews, provide assessment input, manage the offer and negotiation, and remain involved through onboarding to ensure the appointment lands effectively.
CEO Salary Benchmarks: UK Market 2026
CEO compensation varies significantly by business size, sector and ownership type. Broad benchmarks as at 2026:
- CEO — SME (up to £10m revenue): £90,000–£150,000 base plus performance bonus
- CEO — mid-market (£10m–£50m): £150,000–£280,000 base plus bonus, typically 25–40% of base
- CEO — PE-backed growth business: £200,000–£400,000 base plus bonus (30–60% of base) and management equity
- CEO — listed or large corporate: £350,000–£1m+ base with LTIP and significant bonus
- Interim CEO — day rate: £1,200–£3,500 per day depending on business size and mandate complexity
We provide market-rate benchmarking as part of every CEO search brief; our CEO salary guide and C-suite salary guide set out the wider picture. HMRC’s IR35 off-payroll working rules apply to interim CEO engagements.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does a CEO search take?
A focused permanent retained search typically produces a shortlist within three to seven working days and completes with an appointment within six to ten weeks of instruction. Highly specific mandates — regulated firms, PE-backed businesses with particular value-creation requirements, or very narrow sector backgrounds — may extend to twelve to fourteen weeks.
What is the difference between a CEO recruiter and a CEO headhunter?
A recruiter processes candidates who come to them through postings and databases. A headhunter identifies and directly approaches the specific executives who should be considered — whether or not they are actively looking. The best CEO appointments almost always require the headhunting approach, because the most suitable candidates are typically in post and not looking.
Should we use a specialist CEO recruitment agency or a large generalist firm?
For most UK mid-market businesses, a specialist retained boutique produces a better CEO appointment than a large generalist firm. The large firm assigns a team of consultants; the specialist boutique has the senior partner personally leading the search. Personal accountability for the outcome — and the quality of the client-board relationship — is higher in the boutique model.
Can we recruit a CEO without a headhunter?
Yes — but the cost of a CEO mis-hire significantly exceeds the cost of a retained search. A CEO who is wrong for the business typically costs two to three years of underperformance plus the disruption of a further search. The retained fee is a small fraction of that risk; the real question is not whether to use a firm but which one, and how to brief them.
What is the difference between an interim CEO and a fractional CEO?
An interim CEO works full-time or near full-time for a defined period, where there is a genuine leadership gap or a situation needing concentrated CEO attention. A fractional CEO works part-time on an ongoing basis, for businesses needing CEO-level leadership without the scale to justify a full-time appointment.
How do we know if our current CEO is right for the next phase of growth?
One of the most important and uncomfortable questions a board faces. We can support boards with a confidential CEO capability assessment — benchmarking the incumbent against the external market and the requirements of the next growth phase — conducted with full confidentiality and without requiring the incumbent’s involvement.
“Appointing a new CEO into a founder-led business is the most sensitive search a board conducts. The candidate needs commercial credibility, the ability to manage the founder relationship with care, and the operational experience to run the business from day one. Exec Capital ran a thorough retained search, presented four candidates who all genuinely met the brief, and supported the board through a rigorous assessment process. The CEO appointed has grown revenue 40% in his first two years and has the full confidence of the founder, the board, and the management team.”
Non-Executive Chairman — UK Consumer Business
About Our Founder
Exec Capital was founded by Adrian Lawrence FCA, a Chartered Accountant with over two decades of experience in finance leadership and executive search. Adrian holds a BSc from Queen Mary College, University of London and is a Fellow of the ICAEW. Before founding Exec Capital he worked across private, listed, owner-managed and PE-backed organisations, giving him direct experience of the finance challenges and hiring decisions that CFOs are appointed to solve. He personally leads our most senior CFO searches and conducts candidate interviews himself — which is why our assessment process goes substantially deeper than a standard recruiter screen. He holds a practising certificate and this website is associated with his own ICAEW registered Practice. Every brief Adrian takes is informed by having sat on both sides of the table.
Published Research & Thought Leadership Adrian Lawrence FCA, founder of Exec Capital, actively contributes to advancing the understanding of fractional and interim finance leadership in the UK. His recent peer-reviewed publications on ResearchGate explore the strategic impact of these flexible executive models on business growth, transformation, and scalability — particularly for SMEs, scale-ups, and PE/VC-backed companies.
- The Evolution of Fractional CFO Leadership in Modern UK Businesses (March 2026) — Examining how fractional CFOs are reshaping financial strategy in dynamic markets.
- The Strategic Role of Fractional and Interim Executives in Supporting Organisational Growth and Transformation (March 2026, co-authored) — Insights into how these roles drive efficiency, fundraising success, and long-term value creation.
These works build on Adrian’s 20+ years of hands-on experience in executive finance recruitment and reflect Exec Capital’s commitment to evidence-based, high-impact solutions. Our placements draw directly from these principles to deliver shortlists in 3–7 days that align with real-world strategic needs.
Exec Capital operates in accordance with recognised executive search standards and professional recruitment best practices. We support the principles outlined in the UK government’s executive search code of conduct.
Start Your CEO Search — Chief Executive Search
Exec Capital places Chief Executives with UK businesses across all sectors and ownership types. Permanent, interim, and fractional. Every search is led personally by Adrian Lawrence FCA. Shortlist within 3–7 working days.
Retained search
Shortlist in 3–7 working days — led personally by Adrian Lawrence FCA
Interim CEO
Urgent requirements — initial candidates within 48–72 hours
All sectors
Technology, PE-backed, financial services, professional services, consumer
Related CEO and Senior Leadership Appointments
- Interim CEO — Chief Executive at short notice
- Fractional CEO — Part-time CEO on an ongoing basis
- COO Recruitment — Chief Operating Officer search
- CFO Recruitment — Chief Financial Officer search
- Chairman Recruitment — Board Chairman search
- Managing Director Recruitment — MD appointments
- C-Suite Recruitment — All C-suite placements
- Private Equity Recruitment — CEO and C-suite for PE-backed businesses
Sources and Further Reading
- Institute of Directors — CEO responsibilities and executive governance
- FRC — UK Corporate Governance Code: CEO appointment and board oversight
- BVCA — CEO leadership and value creation in PE-backed businesses
- ICAEW — corporate governance and executive leadership standards
- HMRC — IR35 off-payroll working rules for interim CEO engagements
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