As the first generation of middle-market private equity leaders nears retirement, many firms are struggling with how to move forward with succession planning, even when faced with increasing pressure from their limited partners.

Private companies - maintain the status quo or support a tide of change?

In December 2017 Egon Zehnder held a Cybersecurity Roundtable Discussion in Hong Kong, moderated by Richard Lin and Matthew Edwards, consultants in our Technology Officers and Fintech practices.

Based on a survey of a 140 UK based respondents across Audit Committee Chairs, Board Chairs, CFOs and Audit Partners in the UK. The survey was supplemented with 21 interviews with UK Board Chairs, Audit Committee Chairs, CFOs and Audit Partners aimed at determining what characteristics are needed to lead this key Committee, what the job entails now, and crucially how an Audit Committee Chair can succeed.

Technology is reinventing the financial services industry by enabling a simpler, more effective way to solve fiscal and business problems and to connect with customers globally.

Today, many private equity firms looking to grow their portfolios are running into new pressures in the form of expansion and investor demands.

China is already the world’s largest e-commerce market— and is projected to command more than half of global e-commerce revenue by 2021.

As private equity firms look to maximize value from their investments, it is critical to ensure that portfolio company management teams have the right capabilities to execute against their investment theses. Though in many cases the underlying premise will lie in backing an existing management team, it is increasingly common for private equity firms to bring in a new CFO early in the lifespan of an investment.

At the Forbes Leadership Forum on Private Equity, Charles Gray, co-leader of Egon Zehnder’s US Diversity Practice with a special focus on Private Equity, recently contributed to the discussion on diversity, arguing that while Private Equity does not have the best record on diverse hiring, it does have a type of “evergreen hiring” that we can all learn from: Building great talent pipelines by forging strong relationships with promising candidates – before they’re even candidates.

With attacks from financial activists on the rise, companies are starting to beef up their boards with experienced experts, reports the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Both major concerns and smaller, family-run firms in Switzerland have launched board-level recruitment drives over the last 6 months, confirms Philippe Hertig, partner at Egon Zehnder in Zurich.