News and a great big thank you from Prospect 33 London

With the appointment of three brand new CEOs in the past few months at three of our biggest Investment Banking clients, there are certainly some changes afoot here in London.  Here at Prospect 33 we have been working hard to buck the doom and gloom trend that has attracted so much press attention and I am happy to say Thanks to some great Clients and Consultants, that we have bucked it rather successfully.  I wanted to use this opportunity to let you know about Prospect 33 -  London’s 2015, Thank everyone involved and gush a bit!

Here in London, we really did have a hugely successful year and I would like to start by saying thank you to my wonderful team, which is made up of Jonny Downie, Celia Johnson, Avril Brennan and George Harris.  All of whom, without exception, have worked tirelessly to help Tom and I grow and develop our London client base.  

When I officially joined the organisation in September 2014, I inherited Jonny and Celia. I very quickly recognised their potential and promoted them into client facing roles. It was the right decision, and I feel very fortunate to have had such great support around me. As we grew the business last year, we needed to increase the team to help us meet our client deliverables. After interviewing what seemed to be a relentless stream of unsuitable graduates, I stumbled across Avril through LinkedIn, she was hiding out in Dublin, looking for her first career move after graduating and she was perfect! After successfully tempting her over to London, I then started the hunt for graduate number two. With little success in the London grad market, a lunch with a very longstanding client of mine proved very successful when he mentioned his 18-year-old son, George, was uncertain about going straight to university after his A levels and wanted to cut his teeth in the City. Cue George joining Prospect 33 as a summer intern, and subsequently being offered a permanent role in September.

With this great team in place we have continued to successfully develop both the Future Leader and The Women Future Leader programmes as well as increasing our pool of seasoned consultants.  We have grown out our client base to include several new banks, as well as creating a number of new opportunities that will hopefully come through in 2016.  All this whilst still being able to pick my 6 year old son Finley up from school two days a week, shows just how forward thinking Prospect 33 really are in the way they approach business. 

Our Future Leader and Women Future Leader  programme has seen some fantastic graduate and post-graduate resources join the Prospect 33 team this year. The model has been so successful here in London that we are currently transitioning an entire team at one of our client sites into permanent roles after only a year on site.  I have also just arranged for two of our existing Future Leaders to go out onto a new client site to help with a KYC project. One Male, One Female, so we have achieved our vision of a true gender diversity balance with this placement!  and all thanks to a brand new client who I get the train with several times a week, and have no doubt bored half to death over the past 18 months. It worked though!  

These individuals are a credit to both Prospect 33 and themselves, and should be very proud of their achievements, especially those leaving us to start the next stage of their career journeys. We are very sad to lose them, but excited for their futures and will be waiting for that day that they become hiring Managers themselves and take on their own Future Leaders. I am sure it won't be far away.  I am really looking forward to helping Prospect 33 hire many more talented individuals this year to kickstart their careers in the same way.  We are actively hiring for the Future Leader programme now and would be very interested to hear from anyone who thinks they could be right for the programme.  Details are on our website and we are hiring into both New York and London.  

I am therefore delighted to announce the UK had around a 250% increase in both headcount and gross profit in 2015. This was most certainly down to the great team we have built here, the amazing consultants we have hired, the great client relationships we have developed and the support of Tom and Dom, the Prospect 33 Directors and US teams.

Highlights of my year have included being able to reward my team for hitting their targets. We spent a day and evening in Paris, joined the US team at the annual company conference in Miami and rounded off the year with a visit to a health spa local to me in Sussex, where we had a day of team building.  Alongside all those lovely client lunches I get to go on and new people I get to meet every week, this job really is pretty special.

Our Christmas drinks party at The Pearson Room here in Canary Wharf was an amazing evening. We had more than 150 consultants and clients joining us to celebrate the UK teams successes, and to thank our clients and consultants for their help throughout the year. Thank you to all that attended, we had a blast! I really hope that many more of you will join us to celebrate further successes this year.

Thank you so much to Dom and Tom and the rest of the US team for supporting us here in London and to all our clients and Consultants who have helped to make 2015 such a fantastic year.