What does exceptional leadership look like in today's PE landscape?
The answer has changed. Longer hold periods are reshaping how firms think about retention. In some industries, first-time CEOs are outperforming seasoned executives. The CFO role now extends well beyond finance – nearly half oversee legal and compliance in mid-market companies. Meanwhile, go-to-market Centers of Excellence are becoming competitive advantages that scale across entire portfolios.
For over 45 years, JM Search has specialized in executive search for private equity – partnering with leading firms to recruit executives who drive value creation from pre-deal diligence through exit.
This e-book provides key insights for the year ahead: real perspectives from hundreds of CEO, CFO, and GTM searches, practical frameworks for building leadership teams, and data on what's actually working. If you're scaling a portfolio company, navigating a leadership transition, or evaluating talent strategy, these insights are built for the decisions you're facing now.
Featured perspectives include:
- The Future of Value Creation: 4 Human Capital Trends Every PE Firm Should Watch in 2026 – From pre-deal advisors as deal-winning differentiators to creative compensation structures decoupled from liquidity events
- CFO Compensation & Insights Study – Benchmark data from 312+ CFOs across industries, covering base salary, bonus, and equity by company size and sector
- Reassessing Risk: The Compelling Case for First-Time C-Suite Appointments – Why 85% of first-time CEOs succeeded versus 57% of experienced PE CEOs in our analysis
- Private Equity's Next Growth Engine: GTM Centers of Excellence – How leading firms are embedding GTM operators at the fund level to drive commercial performance portfolio-wide
- When Founders Stay: The Art of Building a Professional Leadership Team in a Founder-Led Business – How to professionalize without breaking what works: lessons from two PE-backed founder-led companies
Plus, insights on CEO archetypes, CFO retention strategies, revenue leadership, C-suite interview best practices, and more.