Jim Houghton

For the past twenty years, JIM HOUGHTON has been one of the foremost deal leads in the international marketing services industry. He's negotiated deals from every angle and in all the major international industry hubs, and is a partner at Waypoint Partners. Previously, as the European corporate development lead for the world's then largest and most acquisitive holding company, Omnicom Group, Jim delivered more than forty transactions. Seeing the value unintentionally being left on the table by both sides, Jim moved to M&A advisory and has successfully led transactions with buyers and sellers from across the globe, acting on both the sell side and buy side.
M&A in the marketing services industry offers the perfect storm of big businesses and private equity investors crashing together with passionate owner-managers in the pursuit of rapid international expansion and wealth. Big egos and high stakes make for intense and complex negotiations, and Jim has an enviable track record at finding paths that get these deals done.

KIRK KINNELL brings the skills of hostage negotiation into the corporate world and everyday life. He joined the police in 1987 and worked in hostage negotiation for over two decades. In that time he was deployed on hundreds of hostage and crisis incidents, including as lead negotiator when UK nationals had been kidnapped overseas. He was made Head of Hostage Negotiation and Armed Policing in Scotland in 2015. Kirk was also a leading member of the UK National Negotiator Group and Global International Negotiators Working Group. His global counter-terrorism strategy and training programme was adopted by the nations in the group and is still used today.
Kirk lectures on negotiation at universities and conferences all over the world, including Harvard Business School and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris (HEC). He has instructed at the Hostage Crisis Negotiator Course of the FBI, trained the Philippine National Police and delivers training to the private sector on corporate negotiations, listening and influencing skills, leadership and conflict resolution through his specialist consulting firm, Negotiated Resolutions.