Draft:Vardis Partners

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Vardis Partners

Vardis Partners (also known as Vardis) is an executive search firm that specializes in recruiting board members and C-suite executives for private equity and growth equity portfolio companies. The firm was founded in 2012 and operates from offices in London, Boston, Frankfurt, New York, and Dallas.

History

Vardis was established in 2012 as a specialist search firm serving private equity investors in North America and Europe. In 2014 the firm filed a United States trademark application for "Private Equity DNA," the name of its executive assessment framework; the mark was registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in March 2016.

In March 2016, the firm elected Jeremy Rickman, formerly of Russell Reynolds Associates, as its executive chairman. At the time, Hunt Scanlon Media described Vardis as "a specialist private equity global search firm" with offices in London, Boston, Frankfurt, New York, Hong Kong and Zug, Switzerland.

Vardis is included in Hunt Scanlon Media’s "Private Equity Recruiting Power 100" (formerly the "Power 75"), an annual ranking of the most prominent executive search firms serving the private equity sector. According to the firm, it has appeared on the list each year since it was first published in 2017.

Services

The firm recruits chairs, chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and other senior executives for investor-backed companies across the business services, industrial, energy, consumer, healthcare, technology, and financial services sectors.

Unlike most executive search firms, which assign candidate sourcing and screening to junior staff, Vardis uses a partner-led model in which the firm’s partners personally conduct candidate outreach, interviews, and referencing.

In addition to post-acquisition search, Vardis offers pre-deal services to investors, including pre-close executive search conducted on a success-fee basis contingent on transaction completion, talent due diligence assessments of target-company leadership conducted before a letter of intent, and an exclusive advisor program that pairs investment firms with industry experts during due diligence.

Research

Vardis developed its trademarked "Private Equity DNA" framework by analyzing executive teams associated with more than 500 private equity exits, drawing on research by Steven Kaplan of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. According to the firm, the analysis identified persistence, proactivity, and efficiency as the traits most associated with successful private-equity-backed chief executives.

The firm publishes an annual survey of chief executives of private-equity-backed companies. Its 2025 Private Equity CEO Report, based on a survey of 1,200 chief executives, found that the average respondent reported a base salary of $488,000 and a target bonus of $295,000, that 2025 was tracking as the slowest year for private equity exits since 2017, and that sponsors weighted industry expertise more heavily than prior private equity experience when selecting CEOs. Vardis also publishes an annual compensation report covering chief financial officers of private-equity-backed companies.