Chief Executive Officer and Chief Finance & Commercial Officer, for innovative UK cooling technology organisation

Dearman is an innovative, UK-headquartered, zero-emissions global technology company.

At the heart of its portfolio is the Dearman Engine, a revolutionary technology which uses the expansion of liquid nitrogen to deliver ‘clean’ cold and power. The first commercial application is The Dearman Transport Refrigeration System: a product which enables cool-chain logistics organisations worldwide to prepare for the toughest of emissions regulations.

Dearman has attracted considerable support, including from Innovate UK: a non-departmental public body which has committed over £1.8 billion to a variety of UK organisations since 2007 to accelerate UK economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation.

And in January 2016, Dearman received a commitment to invest £16 million funding from Park Vale Capital, which described Dearman as “an extremely exciting company address(ing) a global need – ‘clean’ cold. Dearman technologies will bring demonstrable environmental benefits, (but) it is the fact that they are also commercially attractive – and even operationally superior – that makes the company so promising”.

Spectrum’s key role in the development of Dearman was to recruit the executive leadership that would complement the existing management team, and who would then successfully lead the 70-person organisation through the full commercialisation phase of the company lifecycle.

Under the direction of Dearman’s Chairman and lead investor, Katherine Priestley, Spectrum conducted a worldwide search for suitable executives. This would be a creative exercise, as Dearman’s innovation meant that the obvious targets for the search would be limited. The focal points of our search strategy where however very clear: the search would be global to allow us to include the best talent; we would focus on commercially-strong executives who had operated in innovative and related environments; skillsets would need to have elements which made them compelling to transfer to Dearman; and candidates should have operated in global markets and worked with investors.

This search resulted in a candidate longlist which was then presented by Spectrum to the client, from which nine 1^st round meetings were conducted by Katherine Priestley and David Rivington of Park Vale Capital. Candidates were shortlisted from the UK, Belgium, Germany, Singapore and the USA. Further rounds of meetings were then held with the Dearman management team.

The net result of this extremely rigorous and boundary-less search and selection process was the appointment of Scott Mac Meekin as CEO and of Allan Gray as CFCO. Scott relocated from Singapore to the UK to take on the role, whilst Allan had recently returned from India – a strategic priority market for Dearman.