This year, Huntswood celebrates 20 years since David Brownlow and Philip Eaton founded the company. Seeing a gap in the recruitment sector, the duo created a model for providing higher quality, lower margin resources than was available at the time.
Over the years, the company has evolved—while it still operates in the recruitment sector, the company has expanded its reach to also provide consultancy services, outsourced management services, and executive training.
CEO of Huntswood Mark Humphries has had a varied career which he believes has shaped how he works in his current role. He started work in the finance sector before moving to global engineering company GKN, where he worked on acquisitions. “It was an amazing time for me,” says Mark. “I was only 28 years old, I had a very senior position in a very, very large business. It was very high profile and I was reporting directly to the financial director and CEO of the business.
“In businesses like GKN, the people that do mergers and acquisitions are seen as a potential future CFOs, and I didn’t see myself in that type of role. One day I bumped into a former colleague who had started a business in the world of corporate finance, advising on company acquisitions, company sales and management bias. Basically trying to take on the big accountancy firms and compete against them in the lower-midmarket of corporate finance.”
Mark went on to be a senior partner at Catalyst Corporate Finance, which went from five friends and a fax machine to over 50 staff in three offices in just a few years. The company is still extremely successful, but after 13 years Mark decided that he needed a change. It was then, in 2013, that Mark met Huntswood co-founder David Brownlow, who convinced him to work for the company. Mark’s experience made him a great addition to Huntswood, and in 2015 he was promoted to CEO.
