Privacy Policy

About this policy

Halyard Partners respects your privacy and handles personal information carefully, fairly and in line with UK data protection law, including the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Halyard Partners is an executive search and advisory firm working with private equity investors and their portfolio companies across the UK and Ireland. We appoint executives, chairs, non-executive directors and advisors, and support investors and management teams both before and after a transaction.

This policy explains what personal information we hold, why we hold it, how we look after it and the choices you have. In this policy, "Halyard", "we", "us" and "our" refer to Halyard Partners Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (Company No. 17355802), with its registered office at Halyard Partners Ltd, 2 Tower House, Tower Centre, Hoddesdon, EN11 8UR. We are the data controller for the personal information described here and are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) under registration number ZC268246.

Who this policy applies to

This policy covers personal information about the following people:

Candidates: executives, chairs, non-executive directors and advisors we approach, assess or represent for a role, or who contact us about opportunities.
Clients: individuals at private equity firms, portfolio companies and other organisations who engage us or who we speak to about our services.
Referees and market contacts: people who provide references or market insight, or who suggest potential candidates.
Advisors and associates: individuals who work with us or alongside us in delivering our services.
Website visitors: anyone who visits our website or gets in touch through it.

Information we collect and where it comes from

We only collect the information we need to carry out our search and advisory work effectively.

For candidates, this typically includes your name and contact details, career history, current and previous roles, qualifications, skills and experience, and your CV. It may also include current and expected remuneration, notice period, your interest in particular opportunities, notes from our conversations and interviews, assessment outputs and feedback from referees or clients.

For clients, referees, market contacts and associates, we usually hold business contact details, job title, organisation and a record of our dealings with you.

We gather information in three main ways:

Directly from you, for example when you speak to us, send us your CV or contact us through our website.
From publicly available sources, such as LinkedIn, company websites, Companies House, industry publications and the press.
From third parties, such as clients, referees and contacts who recommend or comment on potential candidates.

Please do not send us sensitive information, such as details of your health, ethnicity, religion or political views, unless we specifically ask for it. If we ever need such information, for example to support diversity reporting or make reasonable adjustments during a process, we will explain why and ask for your explicit consent first.

How we use your information

Candidates. We use your information to identify and approach people who may be suited to the roles we are working on, to assess your experience and fit, and to manage your progress through a search. We may share a short, anonymised or summary profile with a client to illustrate the type of person available in the market.

Clients. We use your information to understand your requirements, deliver our search and advisory services, manage our relationship with you and your organisation, and send occasional relevant updates or market insight, which you can opt out of at any time.

Referees and market contacts. We use your information to seek your professional view on candidates or the market, and to keep a record of those conversations.

Advisors and associates. We use your information to manage our working relationship and coordinate our work together.

Website visitors. We use information from enquiries to respond to you, and aggregated analytics data to understand how our website is used and improve it.

We may also use information in an anonymised, aggregated form to understand trends in the market, such as typical remuneration levels. Information used in this way does not identify you.

Our lawful bases for using your information

We rely mainly on our legitimate interests in running a specialist search and advisory business. This means identifying and contacting suitable candidates, seeking references and market views, and building relationships with clients. Before relying on legitimate interests, we consider whether our use of your information is necessary and proportionate and whether it is outweighed by your rights and interests. You can ask us for more detail about this assessment.

We also rely on:

Contract: where we need your information to enter into or perform an agreement with you or your organisation.
Legal obligation: where we must keep or disclose information to comply with the law, such as tax and accounting rules.
Consent: where we ask for it, for example before processing any sensitive information or carrying out a formal assessment. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us.

Who we share information with

We never sell personal information. We share it only where needed for the purposes in this policy, and only with:

Clients, as part of a search. This may include sharing a summary of your career and experience with a client at an early stage, such as on a longlist or market map, before we have spoken to you. We will always contact you before formally presenting you as a candidate or sharing your CV or any further details.
Referees, where we contact them about a candidate with that candidate's knowledge.
Associates and advisors who support us on specific assignments, under confidentiality obligations.
Service providers who help us run the business, such as our CRM, email, IT, cloud storage, website and analytics providers, background or qualification checking services, and professional advisors such as accountants and lawyers. They may only use your information on our instructions.
Regulators, law enforcement or courts, where we are legally required to, or need to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
A buyer or successor, if all or part of our business is sold or restructured, on the basis that they continue to protect your information in line with this policy.

Where you give us a reference or market view, we will treat it in confidence and will not share it with the candidate concerned unless the law requires us to.

How we use AI tools

We use AI tools to help with research, note-taking, drafting and organising information. We apply the following safeguards when that work involves personal information:

People make the decisions. Every judgement about a candidate's suitability, and every recommendation we give a client, is made by us. We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing.
Only what is needed. We share only the minimum information required for the task in hand.
Approved providers only. We use business-grade AI services under agreements that protect confidentiality and prevent your information being used to train their models.
Sensitive information stays out. We do not put sensitive personal information or confidential references into general-purpose AI tools.

If you would prefer that we do not use AI tools in any work involving your information, just let us know. We will note your preference, and it will not affect how we work with you.

International transfers

Most of our work takes place in the UK and Ireland. However, some of our service providers, including certain CRM, cloud and AI providers, may store or process information outside the UK, for example in the European Economic Area or the United States. Occasionally we may also share candidate information with clients based outside the UK.

Whenever information leaves the UK, we make sure it is protected. We do this by relying on UK adequacy regulations or by putting approved safeguards in place, such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. You can contact us for more information about these safeguards.

Keeping your information secure

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your information against loss, misuse and unauthorised access. These include secure, access-controlled systems, encryption where appropriate, multi-factor authentication and careful selection of the providers we work with.

Access to personal information is limited to those who need it for their work, and anyone working with us is bound by confidentiality. When we share information with clients or other third parties, we ask them to keep it secure and use it only for the agreed purpose.

How long we keep information

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purposes described in this policy. Because careers in our market develop over many years, we may keep candidate information for longer than a single search so we can consider you for future opportunities. We review the information we hold regularly and delete or anonymise anything that is no longer needed.

When deciding how long to keep information, we consider:

why we hold it and whether it is still relevant;
any legal, tax or regulatory requirements;
whether it may be needed in connection with a dispute or legal claim; and
any request you have made to us about your information.

If you ask us to delete your details, we may keep a brief record of your request so that we do not contact you again.

Cookies and website analytics

Our website uses a small number of cookies. Some are essential for the site to work properly. Others are analytics cookies, provided by Google Analytics, which help us understand how visitors use the site, such as which pages are viewed and how people find us. This information is collected in aggregate and is not used to identify you personally.

We only set analytics cookies with your consent, which you can give or withdraw at any time through the cookie banner on our website or your browser settings.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law, you have the right to:

ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
ask us to delete your information;
ask us to restrict how we use your information;
object to our use of your information, including for keeping in touch about opportunities or for marketing;
ask us to transfer information you have given us to another organisation, where technically feasible; and
withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent.

Some of these rights apply only in certain circumstances. We will respond to any request within one month and explain if there is a reason we cannot fully comply. There is normally no charge.

If you have any questions about this policy, would like to exercise any of your rights, or would prefer that we do not hold your details or contact you, please get in touch:

Email: info@halyardpartners.co.uk

Post: (Registered Address) Halyard Partners Ltd, 2 Tower House, Tower Centre, Hoddesdon, EN11 8UR

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please contact us first so we can try to put things right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. If you are based in Ireland, you can contact the Data Protection Commission at dataprotection.ie.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in the law or in how we work. The latest version will always be available on our website, with the date it was last updated shown below.

Last updated: October, 2026