The importance of CEOs and FDs to the success (or failure) of private equity backed companies is relatively self-evident. But to what extent can we glean useful clues from data regarding incumbent or candidate executives before either doing additional assessment work or making a decision?...

Catalysis has carried out tens of training sessions with private equity investment teams in recent years and we ask participants to answer a few questions to help us focus the topics we cover…

In recent decades, initiatives by companies and governments have aimed to boost the representation of women in the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) industry…

Hiring senior executives is a high-stakes game. One of the most critical steps in this process is executive referencing. Done right, it can confirm a candidate's true potential and fit…

…. Imagine the following scenario. A year ago, the board decided to make a senior appointment to add capacity and capability to the senior team. Head-hunters were appointed, candidates screened, references taken, and an appointment made.

Data on the characteristics and dynamics of small and mid-sized companies can be a bit thin. So, on International Women’s Day, we thought it might be interesting to share analysis from across two Catalysis databases.…

Half the second founder-entrepreneurs we get to interview seem to start the description of their background by explaining that they didn’t thrive at school, were focused instead on sport or their social life, and so started work in mundane or improbable jobs. Recent examples of this include…

You’re probably not great at hiring great talent despite being thoughtful, experienced and keen on improvement (these being characteristics of the people who seem to gravitate towards working with Catalysis). I’m pretty confident in stating that because (a) hiring people is almost certainly…

Over the years, the Catalysis team has observed that the two most frequent issues we need to help our investor clients identify and deal with are:

1. At company level, misalignment between strategic ambitions and the capability of teams and organisations to…