THE GLOBAL REPORT
Issue One:
The first edition of The Global Report reached financial leaders in 14 different countries and was viewed almost 200,000 times across print, digital and social media.
Creative Editor’s Acknowledgements
Credits and Thanks
We would like to thank and acknowledge: Dan McEvoy, Nimesh Shah, Dan Gray, Blick Rothenberg, Lucas Nelson and Steve Berg, Lytical Ventures, Gary Ito, Benyam Hagos, Form3, Amit Lakhani, Omaze, Jerome Arnaud, James Hayward, Dr Henri Winand, and Dennis Mahoney, AkinovA.
The Global Report is produced in the United Kingdom by the Camino Search marketing team. All designs, graphics, charts, layouts, logos, unless otherwise stated are property of Camino Search, of 21 Great Winchester Street, London. Information compiled within the report has been researched by the Camino Search team and has been taken from public news sources and information services. The report is not intended to be used to make financial, business or strategic decisions of any kind, rather the editorial intends the publication to be used as an informative read. UK Practice 21 Great Winchester Street, London, EC2N 2JA. US Practice 401E, Jackson Suite 3300, Tampa, FL. The Global Report is printed on sustainable materials by a responsibly resourced carbon neutral print provider. The Global Report is printed in the United Kingdom. Report cover image credit: Image by Monika Häfliger from Pixabay. Modified by Rob Andrews. All imagery throughout the edition is royalty free stock imagery unless specifically stated.
Foreword
From The MD Edition
With the advent of recent geo-political changes of government both current and forthcoming, market confidence has been mercurial in performance through the first half of 2024 - and reading this report, you’ll notice that there are mixed messages across M&A, IPO and investment movements.
Yes, the market has been a bit challenging - but that wasn’t a surprise, was it? We love the space we work within, we’re learning every day and we’re having so much fun being a part of this brilliant ecosystem. From a staffing perspective, the hiring market across the private equity sector has not showed signed of slowing down. Investors and their portcos are still engaged in transformational appointment mandates at C-level.
The appetite for executive search mandates has extended to such, that we have opened our second office, into the United States of America, Tampa, Florida.
Issue Two of The Global Report differs slightly from our first edition. We listened to feedback from our business development and client engagement meetings where we shared copies of the report with the market.
This edition’s focus is more on ‘people’ and journeys, with a heavier emphasis on features, stories and opinions. I was very proud to bring the first edition of the report to market earlier in 2024. Eventually the report ended up in front of tens-ofthousands of investors, founders and executive leaders, across 14 different countries.
The production of this publication would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the Camino Search marketing team and the editorial contributions of our network and I’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone involved with putting the report together.
May I also take the opportunity to thank you, as a reader, for your interest in the publication, I hope you enjoy the insights, data and information it offers and I wish you a successful end of year in Q4, 2024 and prosperity into 2025.
Harry Harry Hewson Managing Director Camino Search
REAL LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT TRANSFORMING LIMITATIONS INTO POSSIBILITIES
ROBIN SHARMA
THE GLOBAL REPORT ISSUE TWO
PUBLISHED
BY CAMINO SEARCH
DESIGNED AND COMPILED BY
ROB ANDREWS, CREATIVE EDITOR, THE GLOBAL REPORT
THE GLOBAL REPORT: ISSUE TWO
GUEST EDITOR’S FOREWORD
‘Feeling the effect of a mercurial geo-political climate’
‘Dan McEvoy................................................................................................................................10
PART ONE: REVIEWING Q1, H1
PART TWO, REVIEWING Q2, H1 Venture
Exploring The Issue
The Contributions
PART THREE: VALUE CREATION
The Path To Successful SaaS Scaling
Gary Ito, Chief Financial Officer, defi SOLUTIONS (Warburg Pincus).....................................................................................................................42
The Interview: ‘The Carve-Out CFO’ Chief Financial Officer Jerome Arnaud & Senior Operating Partner James Hayward........................................................................................................................52
PART FOUR: LEADERSHIP JOURNEYS
The Interview: Scaling International Finance Functions Benyam Hagos, Chief Financial Officer, Form3................................................60
The ‘Unconventional Journey’ Into Finance Leadership Amit Lakhani, CFO, Omaze..............................................................................................68
PART FIVE: GENERATION RISK
Inspiring Trust In AI: What Organisations Need to Consider Steve Berg & Lucas Nelson, Lytical Ventures......................................................80
Re-imagining The Risk Transfer Chain Dr Henri Winand and Dennis Mahoney, AkinovA...............................................86
PART SIX: CLOSING THOUGHTS
‘The Accountancy Sector’s Greatest Revolution’ Nimesh Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Blick Rothenberg..........................92
‘Afterword and Thanks: The Editor’ Rob Andrews, Director of Marketing, Camino Search...................................99
A Meaningful Impact
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Strategic, financial and commercial talent that drives growth and innovation.
Camino Search is the trusted partner of choice investor-backed businesses. Your success is our priority, and we're here to support you every step of the way.
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We are committed to working at pace without compromising on quality, consistently maintaining efficient yet thorough processes, leveraging our international and regional networks.
More than just recruiters; we are true talent partners and trusted advisors, guiding both people and organisations towards their goals, dedicated to making a meaningful impact.
The Editor’s Report Foreword
Feeling the effect of a mercurial geo-political landscape
The last issue — which was, of course, the first issue — of the Global Report told the story of a flat-lining global response to the tumultuous events of 2022, even through the second half of 2023. Artificial intelligence was just about the only positive impetus into capital markets.
Looked at from afar, little appears to have changed in the first half of 2024.
Interest rates remained elevated as central banks engaged in a three-way staring match with soaring inflation on the one hand, and the threat of economic downturns on the other. Globally speaking, markets stagnated.
Yet, the first half of this year has significantly more cause for optimism. The global picture of stagnation masks significant variation at regional level: North American private equity investments, for example, increased nearly 50% year-overyear in Q1.
This geographical variation is taking place, perhaps inevitably, alongside considerable geopolitical tension.
Whoever wins election to the White House in November’s election will still have a belligerent Russia, a brooding China, and a Middle East teetering on the precipice of allout war to contend with.
These strained international relations can’t help but breathe caution into markets.
However, the Federal Reserve appears to be winning its own war against inflation. September’s bumper rates cut could foreshadow a return to growth during the second half of the year, with the global picture buoyed by the European Central Bank’s own cut the previous week.
Whisper it, but a global return to growth might just be on the cards.
About Dan
Dan McEvoy is an experienced freelance financial journalist, writing for a variety of publications. A graduate of the University of Cambridge, Dan returns in issue two of The Global Report with commentary on H1 of 2024’s investment activity.
Dan McEvoy
Guest Editor, The Global Report (H1 Data)
Globally speaking, markets stagnated. Yet, the first half of this year has significantly more cause for optimism.
Section One
Q1 IN REVIEW
Exploring a round-up of the first quarter’s key investments, mergers and initial public offerings.
A Frosty Global Outlook
According to KPMG’s Venture Pulse report, total global VC investment fell from $95.7bn to $75.9bn during Q1 2024, marking a 20.7% year-over-year decline.
Data from Dealroom reiterates the yearover-year fall, though according to this data set it is less severe than that measured by KPMG.
Dealroom puts Q1 2024’s total at $82.2bn compared to $86.7bn in the equivalent period last year, representing a year-overyear decline of 5.2%.
20.7%
VC investment fell from $95.7bn to $75.9bn during Q1 2024, marking a 20.7% yearover-year decline.
Start-Up and Slowdown
Clearly, this wasn’t a strong quarter for start-up funding. However, different data sources vary on exactly how bad it was.
Crunchbase, for example, puts the quarter as “the second-lowest on record for global start-up funding since the beginning of 2018”.
In KPMG’s report into UK VC funding during the quarter, Nicole Lowe, Head of Emerging Giants, KPMG UK, wrote that “over the last 18 months, the macroeconomic environment has changed dramatically with political uncertainty and cost of borrowing all rising”.
Lowe views the record levels of VC investment in the UK during 2021-22 as an “outlier period” in reaction to the Covid pandemic.
Online platforms
The Cause For Positivity...
However, the deals that did happen give cause for positivity about some of the UK’s top-performing start-ups.
Challenger bank Monzo secured £490m ($610m) funding during the quarter, increasing its valuation to £4.1bn ($5.2bn) in the process. Airbnb [ABNB] and Uber [UBER] investor Hedosophia, as well as CapitalIG, Alphabet’s [GOOGL] independent growth fund, led the investment round.
Monzo is mounting a significant challenge to the UK’s traditional banks, adding two million new customers in the last year to bring its total customer base to over nine million.
Globally, two of the quarter’s three largest rounds went to Chinese companies.
Moonshot AI, a developer of large language models (LLMs) based in Beijing, secured the quarter’s largest round with a $1bn raise led by Alibaba Group [BABA].
Alibaba also led the $600m round secured by Shanghai’s MiniMax, an AI companion and avatar creator, the third largest of the quarter.
TWO IN THREE
The year-over-year decline of global VC Investment.
$1bn RAISED
The quarter’s largest raise, by online platform Alibaba.
Q1 | M&A
Mergers’ Emergent Recovery
S&P Global puts the total value of global M&A deals during Q1 2024 at $549bn, a year-over-year increase of 28%, while GlobalData puts the total at $613bn, implying a 38% year-over-year increase.
$549bn
Global M&A deals in Q1, 2024. A 28% increase.
Energy Provides the Spark...
S&P Global data indicates that the Energy sector saw the majority of deal activity during the quarter, with $86.2bn worth of deals in the sector.
This marks a 381% year-over-year increase in Energy M&A deal value from $17.9bn a year prior.
$86.18bn
The value of deals in the energy sector in Q1.
The Big Deal
The largest deal of Q1 was Capital One’s [COF] $35.34bn acquisition of Discover Financial Services [DFS].
The deal was announced on 19 February, and will accelerate Capital One’s goal of establishing a global payments company that works directly with merchants.
“Our acquisition of Discover is a singular opportunity to bring together two very successful companies with complementary capabilities and franchises, and to build a payments network that can compete with the largest payments networks and payments companies,” Richard Fairbank, founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Capital One was quoted as saying at the time.
Next on the list of the quarter’s largest deals was Synposys’ [SNPS] agreement to acquire Ansys [ANSS] in a deal valuing Ansys at $35bn, followed by the $26bn merger between Diamondback Energy [FANG] and Endeavour Energy Resources.
Rounding out the top five were Home Depot’s [HD] acquisition of SRS Distribution for $18.25bn and Novo Holdings’ $16.5bn buyout of Catalent [CTLT].
£35.34bn
Capital One’s acquisition of Discover Financial Services.
This is a preview of the second edition of The Global Report
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