Nick Gordon, Founder and Chairman of Meraki Capital, spoke at TALiNT Partners' Future of Staffing & Talent Solutions Summit earlier this month. Twenty minutes on what buyers actually look for, what AI is really doing to valuations, and what you have to protect once the deal is done. Every recruitment owner has had the argument. Do we grow it ourselves, or do we buy something? Nick's answer was that it was never either/or. It is a question of pace. Building it yourself works.

There is a romantic idea that the best specialist firms are fiercely independent, answerable to no one, free to do things their own way. It is a nice story, and for some businesses it is true. But in recruitment, where trust, reach and staying power decide who wins the most important mandates, being part of a larger group is not a compromise on independence. Done well, it is an accelerant. Tessero is part of the Meraki family, and that backing shapes what we can offer clients

Ten weeks ago, Meraki Capital completed the acquisition of six recruitment businesses from Hays across Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Romania, Luxembourg and Czechia. From today, they trade under one name. Tessero. These are established businesses. Real teams, years of client relationships, and a track record in their own markets. What they didn't have was a shared identity of their own. Today they do. Why one name Six markets could have meant six brands. Six websites, six stories

Meraki (n.) — to do something with soul, creativity and love; to leave a piece of yourself in your work. We chose our name deliberately. In an industry too often reduced to headcount, margins and desk fees, we wanted to stand for something older and more human: the idea that the best businesses are built by people who care deeply about the work itself. That belief shapes every decision we make, and it explains why we back the recruitment firms we do. Recruitment is changing f

Meraki Capital has announced the appointment of Gary Elden OBE as CEO, a significant strategic hire who will oversee the day-to-day management of the group's portfolio businesses, accelerate acquisitions and lead the integration of its growing European operations, including recently acquired six former businesses from Hays plc. In his new role, Gary will assume responsibility for the operational performance and management of Meraki Capital's growing portfolio of recruitment a

Meraki Capital has completed the acquisition of six former Hays plc territory businesses in a landmark single transaction, significantly strengthening its international recruitment footprint and marking one of the most substantial deals in the company’s growth journey to date. The acquisition brings together established specialist recruitment operations across Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Romania, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, adding deep regional expertise, experienced lea

Love It Listen to how recruitment talks about recruitment. It is "just a numbers game." It is a stepping stone to something better. It is a trade people fall into rather than choose. Even the people who are brilliant at it will tell you, with a shrug, that they did not exactly plan to end up here. We find that strange. Because recruitment, done properly, is one of the most human jobs there is. You change lives for a living. You put the right person in the right place, and a c

Nobody warns you about the quiet. They sell you the rest of it. The growth. The title. The team you'll build, the culture you'll shape, the number you'll put on the board. They tell you leadership is the reward for being good at the job. And then you get there. And the job changes completely. In recruitment it's worse, because of how most of us arrive. You don't get handed a desk. You earn it. You're the best biller in the room. The one still on the phone when everyone else h

Own It Plenty of investors will take the credit when things go well. The board deck looks great. The numbers are up. Everyone is delighted to have been involved. Then a quarter goes wrong. And watch what happens. The same investor who claimed the wins is suddenly very interested in what management did. The questions get sharper. The distance gets wider. The capital that felt like a partner in the good times starts to feel like a landlord in the bad ones. Money in. Hands off.

Earn It There is a ritual in our industry. A business gets acquired. And within a year, the thing that made it worth buying is gone. The founder is sidelined. The name changes. The systems get ripped out and replaced with the buyer's own. The team that built something special is told, politely, that this is how it works now. The culture, the very asset that was on the spreadsheet, quietly dies. The buyer calls this integration. We call it vandalism. Because here is the uncomf

Picture your best biller. The one who lands the deals nobody else can get near. First in, last out, phone welded to their ear. The desk runs through them. Now picture what you're about to do. You're going to promote them. Give them a team, a title, a step up. Reward them. And in doing it, you're going to break two things at once. A very good person. And a very good desk. Here's what we forget in the moment. Billing and managing aren't the same job with more responsibility bol

I spent years running marketing at News International. The Times. The Sunday Times. The Sun. Three of the most recognisable mastheads in the country, sitting under one roof. And here's the thing nobody in a rebrand meeting wants to hear: the masthead was never the point. Those mastheads are iconic, yes. But that recognition was earned. Not designed. The Times masthead doesn't carry weight because of the typeface. It carries weight because of what got printed underneath it, ev