Author: Fernando de Zavala Partner, Zavala Civitas Executive Search | Industrial | Brazil Key Takeaway Industry generates roughly a quarter of Brazil’s GDP (IBGE). Its three largest subsectors are food and beverage (close to 10% of GDP, per ABIA), automotive (about 2.5 million vehicles in 2024, per ANFAVEA) and machinery
Author: Beatriz Baker Araujo Senior Advisor, Zavala Civitas Leadership Series | Part I For many lawyers, the route to influence inside a law firm is clear. Build an excellent reputation. Become indispensable to clients. Generate revenue. Develop a strong book of business. Earn the confidence of the partnership. These are
Author: Lorenzo Zavala Founder and Partner, Zavala Civitas Executive Search | Financial Services | Mexico Key Takeaway Financial and insurance services contribute roughly 5% of Mexico’s GDP (INEGI), and the seven largest banks hold around three quarters of banking assets (CNBV). The best candidate for a senior role usually sits
Author: Fernando de Zavala Partner, Zavala Civitas Executive Search | Legal and Professional Services | Italy Key Takeaway Executive search for legal and professional services in Italy is the retained search for leaders of law firms, accounting and tax advisory firms (studi professionali), consultancies and in-house legal teams. The scarcest
Author: Fernando de Zavala Partner, Zavala Civitas Executive Search | Industrial | Portugal Key Takeaway Manufacturing generates about 13% of Portugal’s gross value added and employs roughly 850,000 people (INE, Eurostat). Automotive components (around €15 billion yearly, AFIA), metalworking and machinery (AIMMAP) and food and beverage (FIPA) lead, and each
Author: José Carlos (Joey) Hassan Suarez Partner, Zavala Civitas Executive Search | Financial Services | Canada Key Takeaway Finance and insurance account for roughly 7% of Canada’s GDP (Statistics Canada), and the six largest banks hold more than 90% of domestic banking assets (Canadian Bankers Association). Because the market is
Author: José Carlos (Joey) Hassan Suarez Partner, Zavala Civitas Executive Search | Legal and Professional Services | USA Key Takeaway Professional and business services employ about 22.5 million people in the USA (BLS), and the country has roughly 1.3 million active lawyers (ABA, 2024). AI, private equity and new ownership
Press Release With more than 15 years of business development experience in China, Eva Wang will lead the firm’s work with Chinese clients seeking senior leadership talent across Europe and North America. Madrid, Spain · September 10, 2026 Zavala Civitas Executive Search today announced that Eva Wang has joined the
Author: Fernando de Zavala Partner, Zavala Civitas Executive Search Series | Industrial | Spain Key Takeaway Industry generates about 16% of Spain’s economy and employs close to 2.8 million people (INE). Its three biggest subsectors are food and beverage (Spain’s largest manufacturing industry), automotive (about 2.4 million vehicles a
Autora: Beatriz Baker Araujo Senior Advisor, Zavala Civitas El debate sobre el trabajo presencial y remoto en los despachos de abogados lleva años activo, pero no ha madurado. Las posiciones se han endurecido desde 2020, y las conversaciones suelen discurrir entre dos polos: socios que invocan la cultura, el mentoring
Key Takeaway: Beijing has launched a nationwide “anti-involution” (反内卷) campaign to address destructive price wars and overcapacity across multiple industrial sectors at once, not just renewables. Electrical machinery and equipment, communications equipment, and medical products all show 29% to 34% of firms losing money in 2024-25. Goldman Sachs estimates Chinese
Key Takeaway: The White House targeted Brazil’s Pix payment system in April 2026, calling it a barrier to US payment companies. Brazil’s Central Bank fired back, defending Pix as a matter of payments sovereignty. At the same time, the collapse of Banco Master, the largest banking fraud in Brazilian history,
Key Takeaway: Mexico’s 2024 judicial reform introduced popular election of judges and magistrates, with implementation beginning in 2025. This has accelerated a shift toward arbitration as the preferred dispute-resolution method in commercial contracts, as companies seek predictability an elected judiciary cannot yet guarantee. Combined with nearshoring-driven M&A activity and the
Key Takeaway: Turin’s automotive cluster invested roughly €2.8 billion in electrification between 2024 and 2026. Over the same period, regional automotive employment fell by more than 3,200 positions. Fewer than 20% of local engineering graduates hold the specific battery, power electronics, and embedded software skills employers are actually hiring for.
Key Takeaway: French banking group BPCE is investing €6.4 billion to acquire Novo Banco and building a 20,000 square metre campus in Lisbon, alongside a 2,500-strong tech hub already operating in Porto. This single deal is creating demand for highly specialised roles in risk analytics, structured finance, and digital-asset compliance
Key Takeaway: Lawyers aged 55 and older now make up roughly 31% of the Canadian legal profession. Yet 55% of law firms report having no formal succession plan in place. Combined with 86% of legal employers already struggling to find skilled talent, this creates a leadership transition risk most firms
Key Takeaway: 81% of US CEOs and COOs plan to bring supply chains closer to home, and 95% of manufacturers who have reshored report satisfaction with the outcome. Yet only 2% of companies with reshoring plans have fully completed them. Factory employment has actually fallen by roughly 82,000 jobs since
Key Takeaway:: Santander and BBVA derive 45-50% of profits from Latin American operations. This creates geopolitical and currency risk exposure most Spanish financial services searches don’t screen for directly. Madrid’s Nuevo Norte development is opening a narrow hiring window before new corporate tenants launch their own competing recruitment campaigns. Data
China’s solar industry has shed more than 200,000 jobs over the past two years. More than 220 solar companies have gone bankrupt in the same period, according to reporting by The Epoch Times. This is not a demand problem. China’s annual solar manufacturing capacity reached an estimated 1,200 GW in
Financial sustainability is the central challenge for 66% of Brazilian non-profit organisations. This finding comes from the “Panorama das ONGs: capítulo Brasil” report. The report was published by IDIS, the Institute for the Development of Social Investment, in partnership with the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), in February 2026. It forms
Nearshoring is the practice of companies relocating manufacturing closer to the US market to shorten supply chains. This practice has reshaped consumer economics in specific regions of Mexico. Nearshoring investment has reached USD 46 billion over five years. This investment has raised manufacturing wages 15% to 20% above national averages,
Carla Geday – Middle East Senior Advisor Carla Geday is a seasoned executive with over two decades of leadership experience across the Middle East, where she has led high-impact initiatives in corporate strategy, business development, and large-scale operations. There is a growing narrative that regional uncertainty has put hiring across
Italy’s national grid operator had 9,204 open connection requests as of 31 May 2026, representing a combined 612 GW of renewable generation and storage capacity, roughly 318 GW of renewables and 294 GW of storage, according to reporting by Energia Spiegata. That figure vastly exceeds both the grid’s physical capacity
Portugal’s non-profit sector runs on a funding model that looks almost nothing like its European neighbours. Own-generated revenue, service fees and membership dues, accounts for 49% of sector funding, government support 40%, and philanthropy just 11%, according to the Diagnóstico das ONG em Portugal 2015-2024 report published by Fundação Calouste
Canada’s non-profit sector is not a niche employer. It is the country’s largest one, employing 2.7 million people, equivalent to 12.7% of the total national labour force, according to Imagine Canada’s People First report on the Canadian non-profit workforce. That scale is running ahead of the sector’s own governance capacity
Walmart, Target and Lululemon all confirmed CEO transitions in the opening months of 2026, part of what TD Cowen analyst Oliver Chen described to Yahoo Finance as a broader shakeup driven by a simple fact: “the skill set required for the future is not the same as the past.” Coca-Cola
Spain’s public employment service, SEPE, rates the difficulty of filling vacancies in the electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply sector at 37.95%, one of the tightest readings in the national labour market, according to reporting by Conecta Industria. That statistic understates what is actually happening on the ground. Juan
In summary: Mexico’s non-profit sector accounted for 3,317,622 total working positions in 2024, equivalent to 8.4% of the entire economy. Of that total, only 1,683,501 were paid positions, while 1,634,121 were volunteer positions. Mexico’s non-profit sector accounted for 3,317,622 total working positions in 2024, equivalent to 8.4% of the entire
China’s domestic jewellery label Laopu Gold, frequently described in industry coverage as “the Hermès of gold,” has grown explosively by combining traditional Chinese craftsmanship with investment-oriented gold jewellery demand, according to FashionBi’s 2026 analysis of China’s luxury recalibration. That a domestic brand now earns comparison to the industry’s benchmark for
During the recent escalation across the region, I found myself having a series of conversations with CEOs, investors, and board directors facing the same uncomfortable reality. Despite having more information than ever before, many still felt uncertain about what to do next. What struck me was that the challenge was
Brazil’s renewable energy sector has a curtailment problem large enough to be a primary line item, not a footnote. Curtailment affected 20.6% of total solar and wind output in 2025, more than double the 9.3% rate recorded in 2024, according to grid operator ONS data cited by S&P Global. Through
Author: Fernando Zavala-Partner Italy’s fashion sector is slowing across every segment except one. Accessible luxury is showing more resilience than the rest of the market, while retail models across the wider sector are being restructured, according to PwC Italy’s 2026 M&A trends analysis for consumer markets. This follows a year
Portugal generated 80.7% of its electricity from renewable sources in January 2026, its strongest performance since April 2025, placing it second in Europe behind only Norway, according to data reported by The Portugal News. This is, on its own terms, a remarkable achievement. It is also becoming Portugal’s central infrastructure
Canadian retail is dividing into two distinct markets that require two different kinds of leadership at once. Retail analyst Bruce Winder describes 2025 and 2026 as defined by a “K-shaped economy,” where affluent consumers continue to spend while a larger share of households shift toward discount retailers, according to his
Beatriz Baker Araujo — Senior Advisor Senior Advisor at Zavala Civitas. 40+ years advising boards on corporate governance, ESG, and sustainability. Former partner at Baker McKenzie, where she led the global Corporate Governance practice. Co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Responsible Investing. Sustainable leadership used to
Solar and wind projects in the United States had to begin construction by 5 July 2026, today, or be placed in service before 1 January 2028, to retain eligibility for the federal Investment Tax Credit and Production Tax Credit under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law in
Women make up 71.4% of the workforce at Spain’s accredited non-profit organisations, yet only 46.7% of those organisations are chaired by a woman, according to Fundación Lealtad’s 2026 study on female presence in the Third Sector. The gap widens further in resources: NGOs led by women manage an average budget
Author: Fernando de Zavala. Published: May 2026 China’s education and non-profit sector presents one of the most structurally complex executive search environments in the world. It combines the regulatory constraints of the Foreign NGO Law in effect since January 2017 and actively enforced with the talent demands of an education
Author: Lorenzo Zavala, Partner | Zavala Civitas Last updated: May 2026 Brazil is the largest retail and consumer market in Latin America — and one of the most structurally demanding executive search environments in the world. E-commerce is expanding at double-digit rates. International brands are accelerating their local operations. And
Author: José Carlos Hassan, Partner | Zavala Civitas Mexico is undergoing a structural energy transformation with few precedents in Latin America. A new public-private framework is targeting 7.5 GW of additional renewable capacity by 2030. Over 20 new local EPC contractors have entered Mexico’s solar market in the past two
Author: Fernando de Zavala, Partner | Zavala Civitas Last updated: May 2026 Italy’s education and non-profit sector is navigating a leadership crisis shaped by forces that go beyond the sector itself. The country recorded only 355,000 births in 2025 the lowest since national unification in 1861 while deaths stood at
Last updated: May 2026 Author: Fernando de Zavala, Partner | Zavala Civitas Portugal’s premium retail and consumer sector has crossed a threshold. The country is no longer a secondary market for international brands — it is an active strategic priority. Lisbon’s Avenida da Liberdade welcomed five new high-end flagship stores
Author: José Carlos Hassan, Partner Date: May 2026 Author: | Zavala Civitas Canada is in the middle of one of the most ambitious infrastructure and energy buildouts in its history. The $40+ billion LNG Canada project the largest private investment in Canadian history is now operational. Trans Mountain and Coastal
Author: Lorenzo Zavala, Partner | Zavala Civitas Published: May 2026 The United States education and non-profit sector employs more people than almost any other industry in the country — and it is running out of leaders. Annual voluntary turnover among nonprofit executives sits at approximately 19%, according to the Johnson
Key Takeaway: Spain’s retail market is growing faster than the pool of executives capable of leading it. AI has moved from pilot to operational standard, and the C-suite profiles required to manage that complexity remain scarce, misidentified, or recruited through approaches that no longer fit the market’s demands. Author: Fernando
Key Takeaway: The local versus international leadership debate in the Middle East is largely outdated. The real driver of executive success is fit — whether the leadership profile matches the specific business challenge, stage, and authority structure the organisation is facing. As companies in the Middle East scale and institutionalise,
Key Takeaway: 74% of compliance professionals now report having a regular seat at the leadership table — yet only 38% are currently involved in executive strategy development. The gap between formal access and real influence defines the compliance challenge of this decade. Over the past decade, the role of compliance
Key Takeaway: Mexico faces a structural talent shortage in 2026, with 67% of employers struggling to fill roles in AI, logistics, manufacturing, and technical functions. Demand is not evenly spread. It is concentrated in four sectors, manufacturing, energy and infrastructure, technology, and consumer and retail, and companies in each are
Key Takeaway: 75% of companies in Spain report significant difficulties hiring talent with the right competencies, according to IESE Business School. The gap is not in volume — Spain has a deep pool of experienced professionals. It is in the type of experience that leading organisations now actually need. The
Key Takeaway: China represents approximately 30% of global AI investment, yet McKinsey identifies a clear shortage of high-impact leadership talent in technology and advanced manufacturing. Senior executives with both local credibility and international alignment are rare — and because they are rare, they are highly contested. China is one of
According to McKinsey’s Global Private Markets Review the United States remains the largest private equity market globally. It accounts for nearly half of global PE deal value. Unlike traditional recruiting, Executive Search in the U.S. private equity-backed environments is much more complex. In PE platforms, leadership is directly tied to value creation, EBITDA expansion,
Key Takeaway: Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer and generates approximately 80% of its electricity from non-emitting sources. This dual position — traditional energy powerhouse and clean energy contributor — creates leadership demands that no single profile can meet without both operational depth and governance sophistication. Canada remains one
Key Takeaway: Spain’s private equity market invested €7,015 million in 2025 — its fourth-best year on record — with 4,032 portfolio companies under active management. The executive who can execute a value creation plan in this environment is not just hard to find. They are, structurally, the scarcest resource in
Key Takeaway: Mexico attracted a record ~$41 billion in foreign direct investment in the first nine months of 2025 — driven by nearshoring manufacturing. Industrial wages in nearshoring regions are now 15–20% above the national average. The investment is moving faster than the executive talent capable of leading it. Last
Key Takeaway: Brazil’s Novo PAC programme has a USD 260 billion envelope — it had already deployed USD 142.2 billion by end-2024. BNDES disbursed $21.4 billion in 2024 alone, a 16.9% increase from 2023, with infrastructure receiving the majority. Private capital is now funding 72% of Brazil’s infrastructure investments. The
Key Takeaway: 88% of organisations globally now use AI in at least one business function — up from 78% a year earlier. Yet only 6% are high performers with measurable EBIT impact. In Asia-Pacific, where AI governance maturity leads other regions, the gap between adoption and accountability is not a
Key Takeaway: Tomás Grimaldi joins the Zavala Civitas partnership with 20+ years of experience across executive search, organisational strategy and public-private leadership in the Americas, EMEA and Asia. His promotion reflects the firm’s commitment to equity partnership continuity as it expands its cross-border advisory capabilities. Zavala Civitas Executive Search announces
Key Takeaway: FDI into ASEAN rose 8% to $226 billion in 2024 — while global flows fell 11%. Manufacturing FDI grew nearly 150% to $44 billion. Yet most supply chain diversification initiatives into Southeast Asia underperform. The constraint is not capital, logistics, or labour cost. It is leadership. Last updated:
Key Takeaway: In Portugal’s compact executive market, the question is rarely whether a senior leader is competent — most are. The question is whether they have the judgment, adaptability, and self-awareness to remain effective as their role evolves. Executive assessment is the structured way to answer that question before it
Key Takeaway: In H1 2025, 82.5% of all new CEOs in APAC were internal promotions — the highest ratio on record — and approximately 94% of new APAC CEO appointments in full-year 2025 were first-time leaders. APAC boards are not risk-averse. They are making a deliberate bet: that continuity, contextual
Key Takeaway: The question in China is no longer local versus global. It is fit versus default. Local executives outperform in regulatory navigation and stakeholder management. Global executives add value in transformation and governance alignment. The failure in most cases is not the wrong type of executive — it is
Key Takeaway: Mexico attracted a record ~$41 billion in FDI in the first nine months of 2025 — driven by nearshoring. Manufacturing wages in nearshoring regions are now 15–20% above the national average. Execution speed is the competitive differentiator. The executives who can deliver it are not in the open
Key Takeaway: Nearly $1 trillion in GCC family wealth will transfer across generations by 2030. Only 18% of family businesses in the region have a comprehensive succession plan. Confidence is high — 93% of next-generation members believe they are ready. Readiness is not. That gap is the most consequential governance
Key Takeaway: Portugal has over 2,700 multinational companies operating locally and a startup ecosystem generating salaries 81% above the national average. The market is more competitive than its size suggests — and far less forgiving. In a market where everyone knows everyone, a mishandled approach to a candidate does not
Key Takeaway: Brazil is Latin America’s largest economy — and one of its most demanding leadership markets. The CLT labour framework, the LGPD data protection law, and structural regional diversity create conditions where a technically strong executive can fail not because of capability, but because of insufficient contextual preparation. In
Key Takeaway: The law firms winning in emerging practice areas are not the ones who identified the right regulatory trend first. They are the ones who converted that signal into a governance structure, a leadership appointment, and a knowledge infrastructure before the market was ready to pay for it. Anticipation
Key Takeaway: The US EPC market reached approximately USD 241.85 billion in 2024 and is growing at 3.1% CAGR through 2034. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law alone directs USD 550 billion in new spending. The capital is committed. The execution certainty depends entirely on whether the right executives are in place
Key Takeaway: Portugal’s corporate training and executive development market is valued at over USD 1.2 billion — and 62% of organisations increased their investment between 2022 and 2023. Yet approximately 40% of Portuguese professionals report feeling underprepared for the strategic demands of their current roles. The investment is growing. The
Key Takeaway: China produces 36% of global AI research publications and has filed over 29,000 AI patents — second only to the United States. Yet the executives capable of translating that research depth into commercial scale, navigating China’s data governance framework, and reporting credibly to a global board are structurally
November 11, 2025 Zavala Civitas is pleased to announce the appointment of Carla Geday as Senior Advisor, where she will play a key role in advancing the firm’s strategic initiatives and expansion across the Middle East. Carla brings over two decades of international experience in corporate strategy, business development, and
Key Takeaway: Manufacturing represents 19–20% of Mexico’s GDP, FDI in the sector grew 27% year-over-year, and Mexico became the #1 trade partner of the United States in 2023. Yet 40% of companies report critical shortages of bilingual leadership. The investment is accelerating faster than the executive talent capable of executing
Key Takeaway: 82% of Spanish companies struggle to hire senior talent and 63% of CEOs cite leadership shortages as their top strategic risk. At the same time, high-performing executives in Spain receive three to five unsolicited approaches per month. The market is not short of candidates — it is short
Key Takeaway: Canada generates more than 80% of its electricity from non-emitting sources and invested approximately CAD 40 billion in renewable energy and infrastructure in 2024 alone. The Canada Infrastructure Bank now holds a portfolio of 94 active projects with a total capital value of $46 billion. The pipeline is
Key Takeaway: Spain generated 56.8% of its electricity from renewables in 2024 — a new record — and installed 7.3 GW of new renewable capacity in a single year, the largest annual increase ever recorded. By end of 2025, total installed renewable capacity reached 95.6 GW. The energy is growing.
Key Takeaway: Zavala Civitas integrates Civitas Germany as partners, expanding its European presence to Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom — and its global footprint to 13 countries across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. The integration reflects more than a year of formal collaboration and decades of
Key Takeaway: China accounts for approximately 30% of global AI investment and attracts over $160 billion in annual FDI. The market is not shifting away from international leadership — it is shifting away from international leadership that cannot also operate locally. The executives who succeed are bridge-builders, not transplants. Last
Key Takeaway: A Thomson Reuters study shows that more than 60% of corporate clients would consider following their trusted lawyer if that lawyer moved to another firm. Yet most law firms worldwide have no formal succession planning protocols in place. The client relationship is one of the most valuable assets
Key Takeaway: Mexico received over $36 billion in FDI in 2024 — and set a new record with ~$41 billion in just the first nine months of 2025. The bottleneck is not capital, infrastructure, or project pipeline. It is the leadership capable of executing it: bilingual, operationally deep, and credible
Key Takeaway: Italy is among Europe’s top 3 pharmaceutical producers, with nearly €50 billion in production value and 66,000+ direct employees. Yet digital health, AI-driven research, and PE-backed scale-ups are simultaneously competing for the same limited pool of senior leaders who can bridge scientific depth with global business leadership. In
Key Takeaway: 92.4% of Spanish companies are family businesses — and the generation that built them through the 1990s and steered them through the financial crisis is now approaching retirement. The next decade will produce more leadership transitions in Spanish business than any period since the country’s economic modernisation. The