Gloucestershire's most successful start-up ever has a new ceo

A new chief executive officer to steer Gloucestershire's biggest business has been announced, bringing to an end a 30-year career of one of the architects of a firm whose turnover hit £17 billion.

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It was first reported back in May 2023 that FTSE-100 firm St James's Place had begun the search for a successor to its chief executive officer Andrew Croft, and now the firm has found one.

Croft is one of the early architects of the Cirencester-headquartered wealth manager, joining the business two years after it started in 1991 in offices in the fittingly named Dollar Street and serving as its chief financial officer between 2004 and 2017.

The Cotswold company, which today boasts thousands of financial advisors and manages an estimated £153 billion of client assets, used headhunting specialists Russell Reynold Associates to locate Croft's successor.

That person has now been revealed as Mark FitzPatrick, who …