Simon Hayes

Simon Hayes joined Odgers Berndtson as Head of the Financial Services practice in November 2009 after spending nearly three years in Japan as head of the top-rated financial services firm in Tokyo. He previously worked for a boutique financial services executive search firm in London for two and a half years. Upon graduating from Cambridge with a degree in law, Simon worked in investment banking for four years.

In 1986 he left Morgan Grenfell’s M&A department to become an equity research analyst with James Capel, and subsequently Warburg, where he achieved a #1 ranking in both the Institutional Investor and Extel research polls in the Conglomerates and Other Industrial Materials sectors. He then spent most of the 1990s in Asia, first as Head of Equity Research for Warburg in Japan and then as a Managing Director and Head of Asia-Pacific Equities for Salomon Brothers and UBS in Hong Kong.

Before moving into headhunting he spent three years in private investment, so has a unique understanding, from an executive search perspective, of how the principal investment, investment banking and equity worlds coalesce. In addition to running the #1-ranked headhunting firm, Simon was also personally voted "Best Headhunting Executive” in Japan in Asiamoney's 2008 poll.