Bridge Executive
Founded by Chris Mamas in 2008.
Chris began work as a cadet with Arthur Young Accountants (Entrepreneurial Services Group) where he met two entrepreneurs he later joined and helped develop their businesses in Australia and the US in the retail/amusement industry. The group of companies and related technologies developed were successfully sold to Kodak.
In 2000 Chris joined a no name recruitment firm for 9 months and successfully developed new business placing candidates with CCH Australia (Tax writers), Siemens/Phillips medical JV (engineers, financial controllers), Thales (submarine electronics engineers), Bausch & Lomb (account managers) and 6 econometrics graduates for Unilever. Unfortunately the proprietors of the recruitment firm used the “probationary period” as an excuse not to pay a substantial bonus, after revenue targets were significantly exceeded.
Later in 2000 Chris joined Select Personnel (a boutique stockbroking support services recruitment firm) where he learnt the equities business over an 8 year period, in addition to developing substantial new front office revenue for the business and cementing the majority of contacts he still deals with today.
Placing institutional dealers, ECM/corporate advisors, private client advisors, equity research analysts, quants, prime brokers, algo traders, operators, basically every equities related role for clients that included stockbrokers, fund managers, private equity, hedge funds, prop traders, clearing and execution houses and investment banks.
In 2008 Chris was approached to build a Private banking business for a local stockbroking firm using a Swiss Private Bank platform. The local firm grew from 50 – 300 people in 5 years, generating over $200m in revenue and over $50m in profit per year at its peak, mainly due to the firms ability to identify key market thematics (coal seam gas) and aligning themselves with listed “stars” in that sector (initiating coverage raising capital and listing these stars), creating tremendous wealth for clients and staff. Establishing a private banking operation to manage the wealth created was an opportunity of lifetime but unfortunately the GFC created panic and fear, which led to the board voting to abandon the opportunity.
Bridge Executive was born not long after that failure to launch in 2008, during the GFC and Chris focussed on building Credit Suisse’ domestic private banking business instead, having placed private bankers with UBS and Credit Suisse in Singapore and Zurich, in addition to transitioning some local advisors into global private bankers. Through these private banking networks Chris met an UHNW individual with mining interests in Tanzania, Food in Mauritius/USA and coal seam gas in Indonesia which led to Chris establishing a family office for the UHNW individual in Sydney, in addition to recruiting key personnel across his entire businesses. A challenging but thoroughly enjoyable role.
From 2015 to 2020 Chris left the recruitment industry to commercialize an industrial food dehydration technology, which has proven applications in pet food ingredient manufacture and eventually the human consumption market.
Chris returned to recruitment in 2020 reigniting the relationships developed over 20 years, in addition to adding property investment/funds management, private credit/debt and infrastructure investment management (including renewable energy) as sectors of experience.
Chris has often been asked what makes a good recruiter and the answer invariably comes down to the following three traits:
- Loving the thrill of the chase – it’s a personal challenge to find the people solution for a client. If you don’t love the thrill of the chase, you shouldn’t be recruiting.
- Adaptability – Tanzanian mining engineers to food distribution directors in the US to Tax writers in Australia. Run advertisements, map markets for potential candidates, direct approaches to suitable candidates, tapping your referral networks, whatever time zones and doing , whatever it takes to find the best people for the client. The best recruiters have the ability to identify transferrable skills and the judgement to identify which candidates can make that transition, across any sector and level of experience. The ability to do this cannot be taught as it’s a judgement call and it takes years of research and experience to master.
- Longevity – if you can provide references from a number of clients you have been recruiting for (more than 10 years), across a number of industries, then you have achieved longevity.