Specialist Recruitment for
PISCES Companies

Supporting FCA-regulated growth businesses through the leadership and governance challenges that come with the transition to intermittent public trading.

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A new framework brings new demands on your leadership team

PISCES is new territory. The businesses navigating it first are doing so without a well-worn path to follow — and the decisions they make about leadership and governance in this period will shape how credibly they are perceived by investors, regulators, and potential acquirers.

The move to intermittent public trading changes the expectations placed on a leadership team. Investors expect greater transparency. Boards require more rigorous governance. The CFO who served the business well as a private company may not be the right profile for what comes next. The same is true of legal and compliance leadership.

We work with businesses at exactly this inflection point — helping them identify and recruit the professionals who can meet the demands of the PISCES environment without losing the energy and pace that made the business worth investing in.

What is PISCES?

PISCES - the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System - is a new UK framework that allows private companies to trade their shares on an intermittent basis, without the full obligations of a public listing. It is designed for growth-stage businesses that want access to liquidity and a broader investor base while remaining private.

Launched in 2025 and currently limited to FCA-regulated firms, PISCES represents a significant structural change in how ambitious UK businesses can access capital and reward shareholders, and it brings with it a new set of leadership, governance, and operational requirements.

What the PISCES transition typically requires

Every PISCES business will move at its own pace, but the transition tends to generate the same category of leadership and governance need. These are the hiring moments we are built to support. We focus on the senior and governance hires that define how a PISCES business is perceived - by investors, by the regulator, and by the talent it needs to attract next.

CFO / Finance Director

The finance function that works for a private business often cannot meet the reporting, transparency, and investor relations demands that intermittent public trading requires. The CFO hire is frequently the first and most consequential search a PISCES business runs.

General Counsel / Head of Legal

PISCES introduces regulatory obligations that most private companies have not previously navigated. In-house legal leadership that understands both the FCA environment and the commercial priorities of a growth business is not easy to find.

COO

Operational leadership that can build the infrastructure a more transparent, investor-scrutinised business requires, without slowing the business down.

Compliance & Risk

FCA-regulated businesses need compliance leadership that understands the specific obligations the PISCES regime introduces alongside existing regulatory requirements.

Company Secretary

Governance infrastructure that was informal when the business was fully private needs to be professionalised. A Company Secretary with relevant public markets or regulated firm experience brings structure without bureaucracy.

Non-Executive Directors

Boards at PISCES businesses need NEDs who understand the specific demands of the regime, credible to investors, commercially grounded, and able to support management through a period of genuine structural change.

Fram Professionals

sister company of

Fram Search

A financial services background that matters

PISCES is currently limited to FCA-regulated firms. That means the businesses navigating it first are operating in a regulated environment that most generalist recruiters do not understand well.

Fram Professionals is the sister company of Fram Search, a specialist financial services executive search firm with over sixteen years of experience in regulated financial services markets. That background gives us a working understanding of the FCA environment, the governance expectations it creates, and the candidate profiles that thrive within it.

For PISCES businesses, that is not incidental. it is directly relevant to every senior hire you make in this period.

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How we work

Fram Professionals offers retained executive search and contingency recruitment, applying the same direct-approach methodology to both.

We work on a fully retained basis for senior, confidential or business-critical appointments. For other hires, our exclusive contingent service applies the same active search methodology.

That means dedicated resource from day one, a properly managed process, and complete discretion.

In a VC-backed environment, where your investors, your competitors, and your potential hires all operate in the same networks, that discretion is not a courtesy — it is a commercial necessity.

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