Case Study: Recruiting an Aerospace & Defence Specialist for an Elite Boutique in Paris

In August 2025, Croft & Co was retained by a leading independent investment banking advisory firm to recruit into their Paris office, supporting the buildout of their aerospace and defence advisory capability. The mandate was led by a senior managing director with deep roots in the industrials sector — a former Rothschild banker who had recently transferred from New York to Paris as part of the firm's strategic expansion in France.

Why This Search Happened

The firm's Paris office had been on a deliberate growth trajectory, with a series of senior hires over the preceding eighteen months signalling a long-term commitment to the French market. Aerospace and defence was a natural area of focus. The team lead already covered the sector from an industrials perspective, but the scale of opportunity demanded dedicated resources.

European defence spending is in the early stages of a structural shift that is fundamentally changing the advisory landscape. Military spending by European NATO members rose 14% in 2025 – the sharpest annual increase since 1953 – bringing the continent's total to $864 billion. In France, the defence budget is on track to reach €64 billion by 2027, effectively doubling since 2017, with a revised military programming law targeting a further €36 billion in additional spending through to 2030.

This is translating directly into deal flow. A&D transaction volume reached 250 deals in the first half of 2025 alone, up from 175 in the prior half, with strategic and private equity buyers targeting mission-critical businesses in AI, autonomous systems, and electronic warfare. The European defence industry generated €183.4 billion in turnover in 2024, up nearly 14% year-on-year. For advisory firms with genuine sector expertise, the pipeline is already visible.

The Challenge

Aerospace and defence advisory sits at a difficult intersection. The role required someone who could combine deep sector knowledge — an understanding of procurement cycles, dual-use technology dynamics, and defence-specific valuation drivers — with M&A execution experience at a level consistent with an elite boutique platform. The candidate also needed to operate fluently across a Franco-American culture, engaging directly with senior managing directors in both Paris and the United States.

The pool of people who sit at that intersection in Paris is small. Most A&D specialists in French investment banking are embedded in bulge bracket industrials teams and are not actively looking. Accessing them requires targeted sourcing and a credible proposition — not a job advert.

The Process

We submitted five candidate profiles. Four were advanced to a case study stage — a rigorous technical assessment designed to test both analytical depth and sector-specific insight. Three progressed to interview rounds with senior leaders in the US, reflecting the firm's integrated global model where Paris-based hires are held to the same standards as their New York counterparts.

One candidate was eliminated following these interviews. Two were taken forward to a final stage.

The successful candidate was an A&D specialist working at a major international bank in Paris. What distinguished them was not simply sector coverage but the combination of genuine technical depth in aerospace and defence with the commercial instinct and client-facing credibility that an elite boutique requires.

What This Search Illustrates

Three things stand out from this process that are relevant beyond this particular mandate.

First, the talent market for A&D specialists in Paris is structurally tight, and that is unlikely to change. The sector is growing faster than the advisory talent pool that serves it. Firms that wait for the right person to appear will wait a long time.

Second, the assessment bar at the leading independent advisory firms is genuinely high. A case study followed by multiple rounds with transatlantic senior leadership is not a formality — it is a filter. Candidates who succeed in these processes tend to be those who have been properly prepared and benchmarked against a credible shortlist, not those who have been put forward speculatively.

Third, the European rearmament cycle is creating a sustained shift in where advisory firms are investing in headcount. This is not a one-off hire. It is part of a broader pattern we are seeing across elite boutiques and specialist advisory firms in both London and Paris, as teams position for a deal environment that will remain active for years to come.