Interim CEO & Transformation Director | Turnaround, Value Creation & PE Operator
This interim leader brings deep expertise in rescuing underperforming businesses and executing high-impact transformation across diverse industries. Their work spans strategic resets, operational modernisation, commercial revitalisation and leadership team rebuilding, supported by a strong capability in diagnosing complex environments and driving accelerated performance improvement. They blend strong analytical and organisational design skills with pragmatic delivery, ensuring that transformation programmes embed durable processes, systems and behaviours.
They have extensive experience working with Private Equity stakeholders as an operating partner, interim CEO, transformation director and divisional leader. Assignments have included leading PE-backed turnarounds, developing growth and value-creation strategies, managing post-acquisition integrations, delivering EBIT recovery at portfolio companies, and collaborating closely with investor boards on transformation governance. Their ability to operate at speed, communicate clearly with investors and create confidence around execution makes them particularly valuable in PE environments.
Well suited to complex or distressed scenarios, they provide steady, highly engaged leadership that quickly aligns organisations around a clear plan and execution rhythm. Their international experience, multilingual capability, cross-sector exposure and strong stakeholder management skills enable them to build trust swiftly while driving material business improvement. This executive is ideally positioned for interim CEO, transformation director, turnaround or PE operating partner assignments requiring decisive action and measurable enterprise value enhancement.
Stabilised a precision engineering business as Interim Managing Director, identifying a £90m pipeline, securing £600k in contract recoveries, negotiating a £3.5m multi-year production contract and increasing revenue from £4m to £5m.
As Operations Director of a £70m engineering group, rebuilt senior leadership structures, embedded KPIs, improved delivery consistency, reduced non-conformance by ~10% and established forecasting processes enabling sustained £6m+ monthly revenues.
As Managing Director of an automation specialist, increased operational capacity by ~50%, grew the pipeline by ~400%, diversified the customer base, and consolidated operations into a modern 75,000 sq ft facility while maintaining strong revenue performance through the pandemic.
Delivered significant margin uplift and EBITDA improvement (from ~2% to 20%+) within an engineering business by renegotiating supply agreements, improving quality systems, enhancing IT resilience, modernising processes and introducing automation in production testing.
About the Candidate
This executive is an experienced interim CEO and transformation leader with a strong track record in commercial and operational turnaround, business reinvigoration and enterprise value creation. With broad international and blue-chip experience, they specialise in parachute leadership—entering distressed, complex or fragmented organisations to stabilise performance, redesign strategy and unlock rapid EBIT recovery. Their leadership style blends strategic clarity with highly hands-on operational execution, enabling them to quickly identify the critical people, process and structural levers required to deliver sustainable transformation.
They excel in situations involving loss-making operations, failed integrations, leadership vacuums, cultural misalignment, multi-site inefficiency, and the need for urgent performance improvement. Skilled in organisational redesign, talent development, financial and operational reset, KPI and process optimisation, and modernisation programmes, they operate confidently across FMCG, B2B, B2C, manufacturing, distribution, international markets and private equity environments. Their ability to lead cross-functional teams, rebuild organisational capability and manage demanding stakeholder groups positions them effectively for businesses undergoing major change or recovery.