Kantar Names New Group CFO as Griffiths Moves to Bain

In the UK, Kantar has appointed Michael Uzielli as Group Chief Financial Officer, succeeding Ian Griffiths, who is stepping down to take a new role as a Senior Advisor with private equity firm Bain Capital, Kantar's majority shareholder. Uzielli will take up his new post in June.

In 2019, WPP agreed to sell 60% of Kantar to Bain. Kantar has since sold off a number of businesses, including the SRDS (Standard Rate & Data Service); Employee Insights business; Health division; paid search intelligence unit - formerly known as AdGooroo; Reputation Intelligence business; and ad verification solution BVS. In addition, Kantar has made several acquisitions, including that of marketing and analytics consultancy Mavens of London; Nielsen's local media monitoring business in Sri Lanka; consumer and market intelligence company Numerator; cross-media tracking firm MeMo2; and AI specialist MindIT.

Uzielli (pictured) will join from London-based private schools group Cognita, where he served as Group Chief Financial Officer, before which, he was CFO for London Heathrow Airport, and he held senior roles as Finance Director for British Gas and British Gas Services in the Centrica Group, Ebiquity, and British Airways. He began his career as a chartered accountant with Deloitte, before moving on to Schroders as an investment banker. When he takes up his new role, Uzielli will replace Griffiths, who has been with the business since 2020, having previously spent more than a decade at British commercial broadcaster ITV. Kantar CEO Chris Jansen thanked Griffiths for his leadership and commended his efforts to help reshape and refocus the Kantar business.

Jansen, who previously worked alongside Uzielli when he served as CEO of Cognita, added: 'Michael brings with him a wealth of experience in M&A, private equity, and front-line operational execution. He has an excellent reputation for helping leadership teams deliver growth, and for shareholders to maximise value. As we focus on growing and developing our organisation, I know he will be a great asset and will add further momentum to our business.'

Web site: www.kantar.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.