The leadership profile that built great consumer markets companies over the last two decades is no longer sufficient. The businesses that succeed from here will require something fundamentally different at the top and most organizations have not caught up to that reality yet.
Over the last 18 months, I have been hearing the same thing from CEOs, founders, operators, and private equity leaders across food and beverage, ingredients, beauty, personal care, household products, and consumer health: “We are still growing, but the business has never been harder to run.” The gap between available growth and the difficulty of capturing it is the defining tension inside Consumer Markets right now.
The Environment has Changed
The numbers tell part of the story. According to Kroll, food and beverage M&A activity increased 20% year over year in Q1 2026, while BeautyMatter reported beauty and wellness transactions rising more than 40%. PwC found that global consumer deal value increased 41% in 2025 despite relatively flat transaction volume, suggesting investors are concentrating capital into fewer, higher-conviction opportunities rather than spreading it broadly. Meanwhile, Global Market Insights projects North America’s beauty and personal care market will reach approximately $155 billion in 2026, while the broader consumer healthcare market is expected to nearly double in size over the next decade.
Capital is not retreating. But the complexity surrounding it has increased substantially. Retailers are demanding sharper pricing, faster innovation cycles, and greater forecasting accuracy simultaneously. The rapid adoption of GLP-1 medications is beginning to reshape consumer purchasing behavior in ways that food manufacturers are still working to understand. Artificial intelligence is moving from a technology discussion to an operational one, increasingly influencing forecasting, procurement, and supply chain decision-making. Meanwhile, private equity sponsors continue to push for EBITDA expansion, procurement transformation, and stronger working capital discipline on increasingly accelerated timelines.
The strongest operators are responding not by chasing growth at any cost, but by simplifying complexity. They are sharpening portfolios, modernizing infrastructure, and building organizations capable of moving faster without sacrificing discipline. Post Holdings’ resilience across center-store, refrigerated, foodservice, and ingredients categories reflects this approach. Chobani’s continued investment in manufacturing scale and vertical integration reflects it differently. The discussions between Ingredion and Tate & Lyle point to the same underlying shift: durable advantage increasingly belongs to organizations that can execute consistently amid growing complexity.
What the environment is actually demanding from leaders
A functional expert, even an exceptional one, is no longer sufficient. The organizations navigating this environment well are led by people who can connect strategy with execution, operations with culture, growth with discipline, and transformation with organizational resiliency. People who can walk a plant floor in the morning, sit inside a board meeting in the afternoon, and still understand the human realities inside the organization they are leading.
That profile is rare. It is also increasingly what boards, investors, and founders are prioritizing when they think carefully about who they need at the top.
Leadership conversations have become materially more sophisticated as a result. Organizations are no longer evaluating talent through functional competency alone. They are evaluating adaptability, judgment under pressure, integration capability, and the ability to lead through genuine ambiguity, not just complexity that can be managed with better processes.
Why this matters to me personally
Consumer Markets has been my natural home throughout my career. I have had the privilege of advising CEOs, boards, founders, family-owned businesses, and private equity groups across the full breadth of the sector and what I find most meaningful is partnering with organizations at genuinely defining moments: scaling businesses, modernizing operations, leading integrations, building executive teams, navigating transformation.
Behind every one of those engagements, there is something deeply personal. A founder succession. A leader trying to create greater impact. A family relocation tied to a reinvention. Those human realities matter as much as the operating model.
As a husband and father to a 21-month-old son, I have come to understand this more viscerally. Leadership carries a profound human responsibility. Growth, resilience, and long-term decision-making look different when viewed through the lens of family, empathy, and genuine legacy.
That is the lens I bring to this next chapter at McDermott + Bull and the conversation I am most excited to keep having.
Sources: Kroll; BeautyMatter; PwC; Global Market Insights; Towards Healthcare; Purdue Center for Food Demand Analysis & Sustainability; Reuters.
Sebastian Jaimes
Managing Director, McDermott + Bull
sjaimes@mbexec.com
Sebastian Jaimes serves as Managing Director at McDermott + Bull and is based in Houston, where he plays a key role in strengthening the firm’s presence across the central and eastern United States and supporting continued growth of the firm’s platform in Texas. He focuses on expanding long-term client partnerships within the Consumer Brands sector, partnering with private equity firms, portfolio companies, investors, and management teams to place CEOs and C-suite executives across Food and Beverage, Agriculture, Ingredients and Commodities, Consumer Goods, and Retail, with particular depth in Chief Supply Chain, Procurement, and Operations leadership. His work supports organizations navigating growth, transformation, and operational complexity.