A small panel of operators, kept deliberately so
Global Advisory Board exists because mid-market boards deserve the same calibre of counsel that large-caps take for granted — without the leverage pyramid that comes with it.
Founded on a gap everyone had noticed
Between the global consultancies — priced for companies ten times your size — and the solo advisers selling generic experience, there is a gap where most of the UK's mid-market boards live. They need senior judgement occasionally, continuously, and at a price that assumes they have not annexed a division of someone else's overhead.
Global Advisory Board was founded in 2019 by four operators who kept being asked for "a fraction of what you did at the big end, but properly." The panel model is the answer: senior advisors with line careers behind them, deployed one or two at a time, inside the governance rhythm of companies earning between £10m and £250m.
We have stayed deliberately small. Sixteen advisors on the core panel, each with at least twenty years running the things they now advise on, each currently active in operating or non-executive roles so their pattern recognition does not fossilise. We decline more mandates than we accept, and the conflicts register is the first thing a new client sees.
Operators, not exhumed CVs
Every advisor has carried a P&L in a market they now advise on. We do not panel anyone whose operating career ended so long ago that their sector map has expired.
Independence as structure
No commissions, referral fees or success fees — ever. Conflicts are declined, not managed. The advice you receive is paid for by you alone.
One accountable partner
Every mandate has a named partner from first call to final session. No leverage pyramid, no bait-and-switch, no analysts learning your industry at your expense.
How the panel works
The core panel is sixteen. Around it sits a wider circle of specialist associates — country managers, general counsel, former regulators — brought in for defined pieces of defined mandates, always disclosed in the engagement letter. The panel is not a partnership in the legal sense; it is a discipline. Members share standards, a conflicts process and a fee philosophy, and they review each other's mandates quarterly.
What binds the panel is a short list of rules that we will happily show you before you engage anyone on it. Advice is written where it matters. Recommendations carry owners, dates and a governing metric. Where we disagree with management, the dissent is written down for the board. And when the honest answer is "you already know what to do," we say that too — it is a more common diagnosis than either side would like.
Where we operate
Headquartered in the City of London, with advisors resident across the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany. Engagements concentrate on UK-headquartered mid-market companies and their boards; market-entry work extends the perimeter to wherever the entry decision takes us, with in-country specialists coordinated — never improvised — as the mandate requires.
Registration details are withheld at the demo stage of this site pending confirmation of the client's incorporation records. Contact details, office locations and the full engagement terms are available on request.
Start with the decision in front of your board
Forty minutes, free, candid — including when the honest answer is that we are not the right firm for it.
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