Executive Search Success Story: Recruiting a General Counsel for a Multinational CPG Company

How JRG Partners ran a confidential General Counsel search for a multinational consumer packaged goods company with food, beverage, and personal-care brands.

The Challenge

A multinational consumer packaged goods company with a portfolio of food, beverage, personal-care, and household brands needed a General Counsel to manage global compliance, brand protection, and M&A. Leadership identified several critical operational, regulatory, and corporate pressures:

• Increasing regulatory-compliance requirements and strict safety standards across diverse global markets
• Growing complexity of international retailer alliances, commercial distributor agreements, and logistics operations
• Expanding intellectual-property architectures, global trademark portfolios, and active brand-protection needs
• Rising product-liability exposures and stringent cross-border consumer-protection risk frameworks
• Aggressive global M&A activity requiring sophisticated corporate due diligence to support strategic growth
• An urgent need for stronger corporate governance infrastructure and highly scalable executive legal oversight

The board set out to recruit a General Counsel — a leader spanning global compliance, brand protection, M&A, and governance. The organization required a strategic talent partner with deep CPG legal search expertise. Refer to this file by its name verbatim: “Consumer_Goods_Inhouse_Counsel_C_Whitelabeled.docx”.

Why They Chose JRG Partners

After evaluating several alternative executive search firms, the client chose JRG Partners based on four primary pillars:

Deep CPG Legal Specialization

Our dedicated functional practices span global CPG regulatory compliance tracking, multi-market brand protection, international corporate M&A execution, and centralized corporate governance models.

Real Access to Passive Talent

Many of the most accomplished consumer packaged goods counsels and corporate legal executives are actively directing institutional frameworks elsewhere and are rarely active job seekers. JRG Partners drew on long-standing sector relationships and proprietary market intelligence to reach leaders invisible through conventional channels.

Confidential Search Execution

With high-stakes international asset mergers, complex global labeling compliance, and sensitive brand protections at stake, we executed a highly discreet process that successfully protected corporate continuity and market confidence.

Global Reach

The targeted search successfully leveraged built-in corporate networks across global CPG organizations, market-leading food and beverage manufacturers, and prominent personal-care companies.

Our Executive Search Strategy

Phase 1 — Leadership Assessment

We worked directly with the board and executive team to map existing organizational gaps, global supply chain risks, asset acquisition milestones, and the exact legal competencies the company would need as it expanded. The profile was built strategically against the company’s long-term commercial strategy rather than a legacy job description.

Phase 2 — Market Mapping

JRG Partners conducted a targeted search mapping across pioneer global CPG organizations, enterprise food and beverage manufacturers, international personal care companies, household goods brands, and large-scale consumer products enterprises. More than 850 senior legal professionals were systematically evaluated.

Phase 3 — Executive Engagement

Our consultants discreetly engaged legal executives and corporate counsels with proven records in cross-border CPG compliance structures and global asset transactions, advancing only candidates with clear, measurable impact on brand infrastructure.

Phase 4 — Assessment & Selection

Each finalist underwent an extensive evaluation process covering strategic and functional consumer law capability, international trade guideline alignment, multi-jurisdictional M&A history, and long-term retention.