Luminary Group is the leadership partner for private equity investors and life sciences companies building value — pre-deal, post-close, and all the way to exit.
of our searches in life sciences — for private equity investors and the companies they back
of retained searches completed
weeks on average from brief to placement
life sciences leaders in our network, from CRO and CDMO to biotech, devices and diagnostics across Europe, USA, APAC and Middle East
We work as an extension of our clients’ leadership teams, not a supplier to them. That means being in the room at the moments that decide value — scaling ahead of an IPO, executing a buy-and-build, resetting a team post-investment, or building a standalone C-suite after a carve-out.
The method is straightforward: understand what a business is trying to achieve, and be honest about what is standing in the way. Usually it is a person, a gap, or a team that has outgrown its plan — and saying so early is worth more than any shortlist.
Regulatory, safety, evidence and market access businesses scale by acquisition — the most acquisitive platforms in this market have absorbed a dozen or more firms in four years. Each arrives with a founder, a client list and a culture, and no integration leadership to hold it together. Value leaks at exactly that point, and it leaks quietly.
We build the leadership layer that makes buy-and-build work: integration MDs, country leaders, a CFO who has run a roll-up before, and the commercial leadership to cross-sell the combined book. Where a founder is stepping back, we manage the transition to institutional leadership without losing the client relationships that made the business worth buying.
Regulatory affairs · Pharmacovigilance & drug safety · Real world evidence & epidemiology · HEOR & value demonstration · Market access, pricing & reimbursement · Medical affairs · Quality & compliance · Full lifecycle development consulting
We cover both sides of contract research — pharma and medical device, clinical and laboratory — and the leadership requirement changes at every stage.
Phase I — early phase and first-in-human demands unit leadership that can hold regulatory scrutiny and recruitment throughput at once: unit directors, principal investigators, clinical pharmacologists, PK/PD leadership.
Phase II–III — where a CRO’s reputation is made or lost. Therapeutic-area heads, VPs of clinical operations, project delivery leadership, biometrics and regulatory affairs leaders who keep multi-country studies on timeline and on margin.
Phase IV and post-marketing — real world evidence, registries, safety and late-phase leadership, where the commercial buyer inside pharma is different and the leadership profile has to match it.
Medical device CRO — device and diagnostic research runs to a different clock and a different regulator. We appoint the clinical affairs, regulatory and post-market surveillance leadership that carries a device through MDR/IVDR evidence requirements, pivotal trials and notified body scrutiny.
Laboratory and analytical — central labs, bioanalytical, biomarker and specialty testing, plus preclinical and device testing: lab directors, heads of bioanalysis, method development and validation leadership, and the quality leadership that holds GLP and GCLP standing.
Across the whole book — FSP and functional delivery leadership, site network management, and the commercial and business development leadership that converts scientific credibility into won bids.
Service businesses are bought on the promise of scale and sold on delivered margin. What sits between the two is almost always leadership — a founder handing over, a merger with two of everything, or a sponsor four years into a hold with a team that isn’t exit-ready. We work with management and investors through all three.
Full-service CRO · Early phase & Phase I units · Medical device & diagnostics CRO · Central and bioanalytical laboratories · Preclinical and device testing · FSP & functional delivery · Site networks · Biometrics & data management · Late phase and post-marketing
Capacity is the easy part. CDMOs win and lose on technical leadership, regulatory standing and the ability to industrialise a process without losing a campaign — and a single failed inspection or tech transfer can cost a client relationship that took years to build.
We appoint the site leadership, MSAT and technical operations leaders, QP and quality directors, and commercial leadership that CDMOs need to scale from a facility into a platform. For investors, we assess whether the existing team can carry a capacity expansion or a new modality before the capital is committed.
Site & general management · Technical operations & MSAT · Quality assurance, QP & regulatory compliance · Process development & scale-up · Sterile and advanced modalities · Supply chain · Commercial & business development
EU MDR and IVDR have turned regulatory and quality capability into a board-level constraint rather than a functional one. Device businesses that treated compliance as overhead now cannot bring products to market, and the people who can fix it are scarce, expensive and largely not looking.
We appoint the regulatory, quality and clinical leadership that unblocks pipelines, and we advise investors on whether an asset’s team can carry the compliance burden before they commit.
We also work across two segments that sit either side of the device OEM. In surgical robotics and medical automation, the leadership challenge is cross-disciplinary — mechatronics, embedded software and clinical evidence in one team, sold through a capital equipment cycle that most healthcare commercial leaders have never run. In device contract development and manufacturing, it is design transfer, ISO 13485 standing and the ability to industrialise a Class II or III product without losing the customer relationship that took years to win.
Regulatory affairs & notified body strategy · Quality systems & ISO 13485 · Clinical affairs & clinical evaluation · Post-market surveillance · Surgical robotics & medical automation · Device CDMO and contract manufacturing · R&D, mechatronics & embedded software · Reimbursement & market access · Commercial leadership
Life science tools, reagents and diagnostics businesses run on a model few leaders outside the sector understand: instrument placement that wins the account, consumables and reagents that earn the margin, and an installed base that has to be defended for a decade. Get the commercial leadership wrong and you sell boxes instead of building annuity revenue.
Two situations bring us in most often. The first is the carve-out — when a diversified group divests a unit, the new standalone business inherits products and people but not a C-suite, because finance, quality, regulatory and commercial all lived at group level. We build that team from scratch, usually against a tight TSA clock. The second is scaling a platform into new modalities or geographies, where the technical credibility exists and the commercial and operational leadership has to be brought in around it.
We work across instruments and capital equipment, consumables and reagents, and IVD and companion diagnostics — appointing R&D and platform leadership, regulatory and quality directors who can hold IVDR and FDA standing, manufacturing and supply chain leaders, and the commercial leadership that converts an installed base into recurring revenue.
Cell analysis & flow cytometry · Reagents, assays & antibodies · In vitro and molecular diagnostics · Companion diagnostics · Genomics & sequencing · Mass spectrometry & chromatography · Bioprocessing & single-use technologies · Lab automation & informatics · Consumables & instruments · Carve-out and standalone leadership build
A biotech’s leadership requirement changes completely at each inflection — first-in-human, pivotal readout, commercial launch, partnering. Boards routinely discover the team that got them here cannot take them there, and discover it a year later than they should have.
We map the leadership requirement against the development plan, tell boards honestly where the gaps sit, and appoint against them.
Clinical development · Regulatory strategy · CMC & technical operations · Commercial launch · Business development & partnering · Board & NED appointments