The executive search industry ranges from "Retained" search to "Contingency" search. There are two broad types of Retained Executive Search firms in operation.
Global: These tend to cover numerous different sectors including financial services, life sciences, automotive, consumer, energy, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, technology, and media companies, as well as other industries. Such executive search companies will have many offices all over the world and the consultants will typically be split by which sector they are expert in. These firms are often public listed and may have over 100 offices.[citation needed]
Boutique: These tend to be more sector specific. That is to say that they will cover only one sector and within this sector, they may only look at certain aspects. For instance, there are a number of boutique firms that operate within financial services and these companies tend to look at senior positions (MD, Director and Vice President) within Investment Banking (M&A, Corporate Finance), Capital Markets (ECM & DCM), Sales, Trading, Research, Interest Rates, Credit, Equities, Derivatives, hedge funds and long-only asset management. As such, these firms would have one or more offices in the major financial centers across the globe; London, New York, Chicago, Dubai, Shanghai, Beijing, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. While the global firms may have a presence within these areas, they tend to cover board level positions within retail banking, asset & wealth management and insurance. However the larger global firms do periodically work within the capital markets arena.[citation needed]
Three of the largest search firms in the U.S. include Korn/Ferry International (CEO: Gary Burnison) based in Los Angeles; Heidrick & Struggles (CEO: L. Kevin Kelly) based in Chicago, and Russell Reynolds Associates, based in New York.
