Odgers Ray & Berndtson may make US acquisition
Sources at the UK firm confirmed that an attempt to bring the two search firms closer had been on the table "on and off" for some time.
Several rounds of redundancies at Ray & Berndtson in the US and the recent departure of some senior headhunters have concentrated minds on the architecture of the association between the two firms.
Somewhat confusingly, the financial services search firm Odgers International rebranded itself as Odgers Ray & Berndtson two years ago when, under the leadership of veteran headhunter Richard Boggis-Rolfe, it bought the UK office of Ray & Berndtson. In the US, Ray & Berndtson remained a separate firm.
Last month Ray & Berndtson received a further blow when a planned merger with niche headhunter Rhodes Associates in New York fell through.
Ray & Berndtson is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas and is privately owned and managed as is Odgers Ray & Berndtson in the UK.
Boggis-Rolfe may now have an opportunity to grow the empire. Roddy Gow, head of Odgers' global financial services practice, already spends a quarter of his time in the US, and has been looking for synergies between the financial services and board practices.
The talks are understood to have been complicated by issues of cross-investment and ownership and a quick agreement seems unlikely. But they serve as yet another marker of the increasingly dire straits in which headhunters are finding themselves in these markets.
