About
Nick Pye. I have sat in the seat.
I advise CEOs of PE-backed businesses in the position I was in: new to the seat, new to the ownership, carrying more than the org chart shows. The work is one-to-one and confidential, and it is about how you operate in role: board relationships, investor trust and the decisions that set the pattern in your first 90 days.
Before this I spent fifteen years at BP, Innovene and Ineos in engineering, commodities trading and commercial P&L, then ran Coryton Advanced Fuels as a PE-backed CEO. Revenue from £10m to over £20m. EBITDA from £2.1m to £4.3m. And when COVID came, I learned first-hand that performance and board confidence are not the same thing.
I read Chemical Engineering at Cambridge and took a First. I am based near Woking, Surrey, and work with CEOs across the UK.
Why this advice holds
Pattern recognition, earned under pressure.
I am not advising from theory. I have sat in the seat, under private equity ownership, with the board in the room and the numbers on me. The arc below is not a CV. It is evidence of what I have learned to see coming.
Read Chemical Engineering, First Class. The engineer's habit: reduce a complex system to the few things that actually move it, and ignore the rest.
Fifteen years across three major energy groups, from process engineering to trading commodities and running commercial P&L, negotiating and leading joint ventures with Morgan Stanley and PetroChina along the way. Once spent a week walking a founder-owner through what his own trading floor was actually doing. Decisions made in hours, held under real exposure, judged by the market the same day.
My first CEO seat, in a technical business, under private equity ownership. Revenue from £10m to over £20m, EBITDA from £2.1m to £4.3m, headcount doubled, operations opened in Germany and South Korea. I learned where authority is won and lost from the inside.
I advise CEOs in the position I was in: new to the seat, new to the ownership, carrying more than the org chart shows. Same pressure, seen from the other side of the table.
What I learned the hard way
As a Commercial Director in a PE-backed chemicals business, I told a board my plan numbers were a P80. Honest about probability, heard as hedging. I had not yet built the authority for precision to read as confidence. Read the P80 story.
At Coryton, every metric was green. EBITDA up 35% year on year before COVID. When the fund needed to move quickly, the performance did not protect me. I had built a great business. I had not built an equally strong position inside the relationship that would decide my future in it. Read the Coryton story.
That gap, between what a CEO is doing and what the board can see, is the work.
In their words
Nick has a strategic approach to leading a business combined with an excellent understanding of the underlying operation of a processing business.
Nick's clear and perceptive analysis of fast-moving and sometimes complex business issues was invaluable... He was decisive in his leadership and combined this with an ability to motivate everyone to pull in the same direction.
He has an exceptional ability to drive growth, build strong, motivated teams, and help individuals reach their full potential.
Start with one confidential conversation.
One conversation. No pitch. We establish whether the pattern you are seeing is one I can help you change, and you decide from there.