Kean and Fenn take majority shareholding at FBI Recruitment; Patsy Peacock moves to global role

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Screen shot 2011-12-09 at 5.29.16 AM.jpgAfter 17 years of living and breathing the creative recruitment market, FBI Recruitment’s founder Patsy Peacock is stepping away from the day-to-day operation and management of the business and following two years of careful succession planning, Michael Kean and Stephen Fenn are now the major shareholders and owners of FBI.

 

Peacock will remain with the company as chairman, a global ambassador role that will see her concentrate on future growth markets and opportunities for the FBI recruitment brand – which currently has offices in Sydney, Amsterdam and London.

DROGA-PATSY-CANNES.jpgSays Peacock – pictured left with Dave Droga in Cannes: “Building the FBI brand has been a wonderful opportunity for me to remain involved in a great industry, with people that I love, and now the time is right to hand the baton over to Michael and Stephen. I am proud of the fact I have been able to nurture juniors starting out in the industry, contribute to the success of many senior players, and help out most of the country’s agency start ups.” says Peacock.

Kean joined FBI in 2005 and has been the managing director for the past three years. He will move into the CEO role which will see him continue to focus on the overall strategic direction of the Sydney, London and Amsterdam offices, further develop FBI’s international presence as well as their relationships with key agencies in all major international markets. 

“The goalposts are constantly moving in how agencies value and work with recruitment companies, so it’s imperative we continue to maintain a point of difference”, says Kean. “With a great team in place across our three offices, we are able to provide a truly global talent pool to our clients around the world, which has been very well received.”

Over the last two years, Fenn, who has successfully established FBI’s creative services division, has also been working closely with Kean in a general manager capacity to expand the Sydney business, which has market leading consultants in creative and an ever growing team across digital and design.

“Since joining FBI there has been a strategy in place to expand our offering beyond recruiting purely creative roles, to embrace a growing demand from our clients for great talent across their spectrum of creative services”, says Fenn, reflecting on the industry trend of price conscious marketers now spending a larger slice of their budgets on digital, as well as the ever present focus on agencies operating more efficiently.

“By hiring the best consultants in their respective fields we are now in a position to find the best talent in the market across creative, creative services, digital and design”, says Fenn.

The new structure will see Fenn assume the managing director role, taking on more operational responsibility of FBI’s flagship Sydney office.

On the importance of having one unified global team across their three offices, Kean concludes: “Agencies are increasingly looking for talent that can bring something different to the table, so with each market possessing different levels of specialised skill-sets, it’s only going to become more important to have a global perspective and understanding.”