Who We Are · Talent Advisory for Serious Change
The Consultancy Group is a specialist talent advisory firm placing senior Finance, Tax, Strategy and Transformation leadership on a retained basis into organisations where the hire genuinely matters. That includes PE-backed growth, post-merger integration, in-house capability build, and major transformation programmes.
The Difference
Most firms we compete with do one of two things well. They run volume contingent desks, turning over mandates at pace, with generalist consultants scaling up for briefs that really need specialists. Or they run the global retained model: deep process, strong brand, but generalists at the top of it and a platform cost built into every mandate, whether it fits or not.
We built The Consultancy Group on a different model. Retained, because senior hiring is the kind of work that rewards commitment on both sides. Specialist, because the person taking your brief should already know your market cold, not be learning it on your time. Advisory from the outset, because the most useful conversations start with the situation rather than the specification.
Eleven years in, that is still the firm we are building. It runs through everything: the disciplines we cover, the consultants we hire, the clients we take on, and the candidates we stay close to. It is why we turn down mandates that don’t fit, and why the ones we accept come almost entirely from people we have already worked with.
What We Believe
Our consultants each work one discipline, and nothing else.
The person taking your brief already knows your market, including the talent landscape, the compensation benchmarks, the adjacent networks, the firms candidates are leaving, and the firms they want to join. That depth is the entire reason we exist. We have deliberately resisted expanding into disciplines we cannot work credibly. We would rather refer a search elsewhere than deliver it poorly.
We begin with the situation, not the specification.
Most conversations start with a question, not a brief. What is the business actually trying to do? What capability gap is this hire really filling? Is the structure right? Is the level right? Is the timing right? Often the answer reshapes the search, and sometimes it reshapes the decision to hire at all. That thinking is the work. The placement is the output.
94% of our work comes from people we've already worked with.
We do not chase mandates. We work with a deliberately contained book of clients and candidates we know well and stay in close contact with, often over many years, through multiple roles and on both sides of the table. Candidates become clients. Clients become candidates. The relationship is what lets us move quickly and know exactly who to call.
Every conversation is treated as confidential — without needing to be asked.
Senior hiring is often sensitive on both sides. A CEO exploring the market while still in role. A PE-backed CFO before a deal is public. A Head of Strategy whose team cannot know. A Tax Director exploring the market before a restructuring or leadership change becomes visible. We operate with the same standards of discretion the best advisory firms apply to any sensitive brief, because at this level trust is not a feature of the service. It is the service.
A focused shortlist with a rationale — not a pile of CVs.
We typically present three to five candidates per mandate, each with a written rationale explaining why we are suggesting them and what we see as the trade-offs. That discipline sits downstream of everything else. Deep networks mean we do not need to cast wide. Advisory thinking means we can defend every name. Retained relationships mean candidates return our calls. The shortlist is the proof.
The Story
The Consultancy Group was founded in 2014 by a small group of consultants and search professionals who had watched the senior end of Finance, Strategy and Transformation hiring become less and less well served by the firms nominally responsible for it. Generalist recruiters didn't know the markets deeply enough. Retained search firms couldn't move at the speed modern businesses required. Neither had the specialist culture a serious hire actually demanded.
We set out to build a firm where each consultant owned a discipline completely, including its networks, its compensation landscape, its adjacent markets, its firms, and their cultures. The work begins with advisory thinking about the hire rather than a mechanical response to a brief.
Over the years that followed, we added Tax, and then Transformation, each led by a specialist we had known and worked with for years before the practice launched. We added geographies, first Europe, then the US. And we deepened the offer around the core retained model: permanent retained search, interim leadership, and advisory engagements on team structure, compensation and succession alongside individual hires.
What has not changed is the model: four specialist practices, each one deep rather than wide, working with a contained book of clients and candidates we know intimately. The firm we are today is the firm we set out to build. It just takes time to earn the relationships that make it work.
"Specialist depth across Finance, Tax, Strategy & Transformation, combined with genuine senior relationships, market intelligence and advisory thinking. The rigour of the retained model, without the process weight of a global search platform."
The People
We do not have a single “team” page because we do not operate as a single team. Each practice is led by specialists who work that discipline and nothing else, and those are the people you want to meet.
Chris Haywood leads the Strategy practice, covering corporate strategy, consulting firms, commercial leadership, and M&A.
Meet the Strategy team → 02 AlignPhil Dye leads the Finance practice, covering CFO, Controllership, FP&A, and Commercial Finance leadership across corporates, private equity, and professional services. Bethany Kopiski leads the Tax practice, focusing on senior tax leadership across corporates and advisory firms.
Meet the Finance & Tax team → 03 ExecuteChristian Pampellone leads the Transformation practice, working on ERP and systems programmes, M&A integration and carve-outs, operating model redesign, and PMO leadership.
Meet the Transformation team →For You
For Clients Hiring
For Candidates
For Future Colleagues
Start the Conversation
Hiring, exploring your next move, or considering joining us. Every conversation begins the same way: a call with the specialist who works your discipline.