The Vantage Partner Team is driven by a group of industry professionals with extensive senior management experience within some of the world's leading organisations. The Partner Team is supported by a group of highly experienced consultants who are all focused on delivering to our clients the high level of service and solutions that are synonymous with Vantage Market Entry. In addition, our research team is one of the largest teams per Consultant head in the industry.
Mark Shields
Original founder and Managing Partner of Vantage, a respected professional and entrepreneur with a world class reputation.
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In 1989, Mark founded Corporate Executive Search (CES) and over the next 10 years grew the company into an International Head-hunter, specialising in the convergence of Management Consultancy, Telecoms, IT, New Media and Financial Services. CES grew to in excess of 200 staff with offices in London, Frankfurt and Singapore. Clients included British Telecom, Microsoft, PwC, Capgemini and Oracle. Corporate Executive Search was the first head-hunter to float on the London Stock Exchange AIM in 1998. Mark sold his majority shareholding to an MBO in 1999.
In 2001, he founded Vantage Market Entry to enable clients to accelerate market entry thereby gaining competitive advantage and market share. Mark’s main role is client management, team moves, acquisitions and search, his client contacts are the Global Industry Leaders of the Consulting Industry. He is a pioneer in the movement of teams having completed 10 successful team moves in the last 3 years.
Peter Cook
Non-Executive Partner with over 25 years experience designing market entry strategies for the Global Telecoms arena.
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Peter began his executive career at Mercury Communications, where he introduced Europe’s first competitive telephony service and negotiated the first non PTT interconnect between Vodafone and Mercury. Subsequently he transformed BT’s domestic packet switched data services into Global Network Services - the market leader and BT’s most profitable global offering. As Director of Product Management and Marketing, in San Jose, California, he managed a worldwide network of BT people and operating partnerships.
He then joined AT&T as Marketing and Strategy Director for Europe, responsible for make/buy decisions on investments in international and access facilities vs leased services.
Peter is a founding partner of Telcom Ltd, a world leader in the design of market entry strategies for the global telecoms arena. He advises at board level to such companies as British Telecom, Vodafone etc.
As a non-executive Partner, Peter provides Vantage with expert knowledge in IPO's, Mergers & Acquisitions and Technology strategies within the Global Telecoms consulting arena.
David Dickie
Non-Executive Partner, with extensive experience both within and as a supplier to the Global TMT Consulting arena.
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David’s early career was spent in senior financial roles within Haymarket Publishing, looking after the commercial aspects of such high-profile UK business titles as Campaign and Marketing.
He then spent 10 years as a Financial Director within the advertising industry working for agencies such as DMB&B (now D’Arcy Group), BMP DDB Needham and WMGO Group (now Incepta Group) where he also assumed responsibility for Human Resources departments (HR).
In 1997 David established DNP, an Executive Search firm focused on the Global TMT Consulting sector. DNP completed numerous successful campaigns on behalf of its clients before David divested his shareholding and moved on to found Nexec Partners, which is a leading European 'people development' firm with services including Executive Search, CEO development programmes, Executive Workshops etc.
At Nexec, David developed his reputation as a professional search practitioner, able to deliver against complex Global requirements and has been instrumental in building entire management teams and business units for Private Equity clients and their portfolio companies.
As a non-executive Partner, David provides Vantage with expert knowledge and strategies within the Global Telecoms consulting arena.
David is also founder of Advance Aid, a charity that will enable emergency supplies for Africa to be made in Africa and stored in strategic locations – in advance of any emergency.
William De Sousa
Technology & Systems Partner, leading the drive to employ the latest dynamic technologies and apply them to gain business advantage.
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William brings over 16 years experience within the Recruitment, IT and Business Consultancy sectors. He began his recruitment career within the technology sector, specialising in placing specialist microsoft software developers into Financial Services end-users and consultancies.
He then saw a massive potential demand within eCommerce (and before the boom), and was one of the first headhunters within the UK market to specialise and evangelise on the need for eCommerce strategies, platforms and people. This led to being responsible for one of the first major eCommerce team moves/acquisitions, building a new European eBusiness division for ECSoft. This entailed moving the European Internet Business Group comprising 11 people (including Directors, Principal Consultants and industry acclaimed technical gurus) from DEC (Compaq).
His major skills are in the application of technology solutions to maximise Executive Search/Consulting companies business functions.
William principally advises Vantage on emerging technology and applying that to gain competive advantage as well as helping Vantage on strategic projects.
