In perhaps one of the most widely publicised headhunting cases in recent years, Starbucks poached Brian Niccol from Chipotle with an eye-watering package in 2024: $113 million in total potential compensation, a corporate jet allowance and permission to work remotely over 1,000 miles from company headquarters. Some might view the case as an example of executive greed, but for others, it’s evidence of how far companies are prepared to go to secure the right talent.Â
The 2026 edition of the Spear’s Executive Search and Headhunters Index features the top experts with experience securing proven, revenue-growing rainmakers. As Adam Scarr of Bayford Hale observes, the search landscape has undergone a fundamental shift from a ‘war on talent’ to a ‘war on assets’ whereby institutions are focusing less on impressive CVs and more on a candidate’s market authority and portable client relationships.
Explore the other rankings within the 2026 Spear’s Business & Entrepreneurship Indices:
Themes in 2026
Market consolidation in wealth management
This is, to an extent, emphasised by the market consolidation gripping the wealth management industry. In September 2025, Miami-based Corient agreed to acquire Stonehage Fleming and Stanhope Capital, and in March 2026, Kansas-based Creative Planning bought London-based MASECO Private Wealth. This comes alongside NatWest’s purchase of Evelyn Partners this year for £2.7 billion.
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‘Market consolidation has fundamentally changed what a hire is worth,’ says Tom Upson of Carpenter Farraday, who explains that the changes in the market are having a twofold effect: the first, he says, is that once an acquisition beds in, leaders gain a fresh growth narrative, resulting in a demand for fresh talent. The second – and arguably the more significant – is that advisers seeking refuge from institutional bureaucracy are spawning a steady wave of nimble new boutiques.
[See also: Why British wealth management is taking on an American accent]
A human touch
Firms are now working harder than ever to protect their talent from the allure of new suitors, our featured advisers tell Spear’s. Retention incentives include deferred equity schemes and higher bonuses, in addition to longer notice periods. Simultaneously, extended lock-in periods have altered candidate behaviour, with headhunters and search firms now having to run their own exhaustive due diligence to assess a prospective employer’s true culture.
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The advancements in AI have proven to be a useful tool in this regard, but as Simon Worthington notes, it has also contributed to companies requiring deep assessment beyond basic candidate mapping that can be largely commoditised by technology. On one recent mandate, he says that the client had already identified two candidates and the entire search brief was centred on conducting deep-cover referencing on those two individuals. Alex Diffey of Valentine Thomas & Partners uses psychometric profiling to assess candidates while Nick Dogilewski’s boutique clients ask questions to determine personality and authenticity.
The family office problem
Nowhere is the talent squeeze tighter than in the family office sector. Paul Avon of True House Partners notes that roughly 70 per cent of single- and multi-family offices have been established since the turn of the millennium. He explains that because family offices are lean and require highly personal operations, a single wrong hire can prove catastrophic to client trust. While clients historically demanded candidates with prior family office experience, a severe talent shortage has forced a newfound openness to lateral hires. In these positions, Avons says, title-chasing, corporate ego and public profile are taking a back seat to discretion and adaptability.
Looking ahead, executive search firms are positioning themselves for a massive generational wealth transfer. Mark Somers of Somers Partnership frames this shift as a ‘next-generation regeneration’ that is forcing firms to adapt their positioning, driving a surge in demand for female advisers, private markets specialists, and modern chief client officers capable of bridging client-facing disciplines. As Diffey says, engaging Gen-Z and next-gen talent has evolved from a ‘soft HR initiative’ into a ‘central commercial strategy’.
Click the links below to jump to a section of this article:
- Methodology
- The best executive search professionals and headhunters: some names to know
- The best executive search professionals and headhunters: the complete list
- Contact us
Methodology
Each year, the Spear’s Research Unit reassesses and refreshes its rankings of the leading providers in each sector by gathering data from and about the advisers and firms themselves, assessing submission forms, collating nominations, carrying out peer reviews, reviewing data from third-party sources, gathering references and recommendations, canvassing experts and conducting hundreds of interviews.
Advisers are evaluated using a proprietary scoring system that assigns different weightings to certain attributes. These scores feed directly into each new set of rankings in the Spear’s Indices. Each of these indices are published first online (according to the research calendar) and then in print. Print publication takes the form of the annual Spear’s 500 directory, which includes the top advisers in every index.
[See also: A guide to The Spear’s 500: Everything you need to know]
Each featured adviser is profiled on spears500.com. The site allows users to search the Spear’s database of more than 4,000 entities to find one (or more) to meet their specific requirements by filtering for specific attributes such as an adviser’s location, their specialist expertise and information about their client base.
The best executive search professionals and headhunters: some names to know
Billy Stephenson
- Focus: C-suite and senior appointments
- Position: Founder and managing director
- Firm: Stephenson Executive Search
Stephenson Executive Search focuses on appointments in the family office, wealth management and asset management sectors, founder Billy Stephenson tells Spear’s. ‘We partner with clients and help them across the whole of their business, appointing CEOs, CFOs and heads of divisions.’
As family offices become more popular internationally, the firm has followed suit, operating in the Middle East, Asia and across Europe. However, Stephenson, a former Credit Suisse banker, notes that the core qualities companies look for in candidates remain the same: ‘Discretion, emotional intelligence and career longevity will always be key,’ he says.
‘Supporting the continued drive for diversity is critical,’ he adds. The firm is a signatory of the Black Talent Charter and has ‘committed to help promote black talent in the UK’.
Read Billy Stephenson’s full profile at Spears500.com
Gina Le Prevost
- Focus: International recruitment
- Position: Founder and CEO
- Firm: AP Executive
Gina Le Prevost is the founder and CEO of AP Executive, a global recruitment agency established in 1990 that specialises in wealth management, private family offices, trusts, funds and fiduciary firms.
Part of AP Group, which Le Prevost also heads up, AP Executive prides itself on finding ‘the best candidates for our valued clients across the globe’. Le Prevost has clients and candidates in more than 58 locations, including the UK, Switzerland, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas/Caribbean.
‘They are all driven to provide the best services to their clients and so need the best staff, which is where AP Executive steps in,’ Le Prevost tells Spear’s. ‘I especially enjoy assisting entrepreneurs in establishing a new family office. And nothing surprises me where job seekers are involved.’
Read Gina Le Prevost’s full profile at Spears500.com
Auria Heanley
- Focus: Personal and executive assistants
- Position: Co-founder
- Firm: Oriel Partners
‘Kindness, honesty and fun’ are the core values that underpin the operations at Oriel Partners, co-founder and director Auria Heanley tells Spear’s.
Specialising in the recruitment and placement of personal and executive assistants, as well as administrative and business support, Oriel Partners prioritises discretion and confidentiality by necessity; its clients include family offices, boutique investment firms, UHNW principals and well-known names in the luxury and entertainment industries.
Heanley, who established the firm in 2018 alongside fellow recruiter Olivia Coughtrie, says that 60 to 70 percent of its business comes via recommendation, especially from within (U)HNW circles. She attributes this to Oriel Partners’ ‘high-end, high-touch’ service: ‘[Coughtrie and I] meet all of the new clients … We like to do face-to-face meetings rather than Teams calls. That human interaction is still very, very important to us.’
Read Auria Heanley’s full profile at Spears500.com
Andrew Bayliss
- Focus: C-suite and director roles
- Position: Partner
- Firm: Hanover Search Group
At Hanover Search Group, Andrew Bayliss is focused on ‘building relationships with the best client-facing staff in the market’, namely senior private bankers, investment managers and other front-office private client financial advisers.
He tells Spear’s that employers in the space – which include family offices and wealth and asset management firms – are looking to recruit ‘people who are really successful: they’ve got great clients, they’re really good at client acquisition [and] they’ve got really strong intermediary networks … It’s all about the long-term game.’
Having joined the firm in 2006, Bayliss uses his depth of experience to identify and assess appropriate candidates for his clients, ensuring a strong fit based on ‘the style, culture, proposition and opportunity’ of the role.
Read Andrew Bayliss’ full profile at Spears500.com
Mark Somers
- Focus: Family office and wealth management roles
- Position: Founder and director
- Firm: Somers Partnership
Mark Somers, who founded the executive search boutique Somers Partnership in 2005 with his wife, Jo, a former private banker, provides Spear’s with an expert analysis of the financial services sector. He says in his experience employees fall into three types: ‘rainmakers’ at the top of the chain, ‘lawnmowers’ forming the 80 per cent majority, and destructive ‘well poisoners’ making up the final 10 per cent.
Somers himself is a ‘rainmaker’. Selected to attend Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses programme at UCL, he also has written a book, How To Work For A Billionaire, on family office recruitment. ‘We have become the market leaders internationally in recruitment, and one of the most-networked organisations across the wealth management sector,’ he says.
Somers was a judge at the 2025 Spear’s Awards, lending his expertise on recruitment and financial services to the consideration process.
Read Mark Somers’ full profile at Spears500.com
The best executive search professionals and headhunters: the complete list
Click on the individual names to be directed to more detailed profiles of each adviser on The Spear’s 500 website. The table is ordered by ranking and then alphabetically by surname.
Contact us
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- If you have missed calendar deadlines for our research cycles in 2026, you can still register your interest for updates about upcoming research and rankings.
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