It has felt like the busiest market  for many years and the number of placements that we have made and moves that we have observed fully endorse this.

There have five dominant factors to the level of moves of FDs and CFOs;

• The high volume of transactions (especially private equity)
• Growing SMEs appointing their first FD
• Moves driven by lifestyle changes
• Retirements
• Internal promotions

Sectors have been well represented with manufacturing taking the most dominant position as always. Tech sector comes in second place with logistics and professional services also featuring highly. Over a third of the organisations appointing new finance leaders have some level of private equity investment.

Female appointments are 21% of the total. This is slightly down on the past quarter, running at between 20 and 24% for 2021.

Interim appointments continue to stay very busy. The high demand around deal activity, restructuring and growth planning that we have throughout 2021 have been joined by a slight increase in the level of turnaround assignments.

A final comment to my colleague in our CFO Network – Gillian McBride has worked extremely hard throughout 2021 to deliver in the busy market. Pleased to see that she has delivered her career best results in the past quarter. A superb effort.

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