Leadership (CEO BIO & MESSAGE)
Steve Slater
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Steve Slater founded Ateca in 2012 and has led the firm continuously since, building it from a generalist recruitment practice into a specialist executive search firm operating exclusively within private banking and wealth management.
Over more than two decades in senior search across financial services, Steve has built a career around a single conviction: that the most valuable search relationships are built on deep, specific market knowledge rather than broad, general coverage. That conviction shaped the strategic decision to move Ateca away from generalist recruitment entirely and into an exclusive focus on private banking – a decision that today defines every aspect of how the firm operates.
Steve holds an MBA from the University of Gloucestershire and a Qualifi Level 7 Diploma in Executive Management, awarded with distinction. He leads every senior mandate at Ateca personally, working directly with clients and candidates across the firm’s markets in the Middle East, Asia and Europe.
He also writes Private Banking Life, Ateca’s editorial publication covering senior talent movement, compensation trends and structural change across the private banking industry.
A Message From Our Founder
I started Ateca in 2012 with a straightforward belief: that recruitment done properly is not a volume business. It is a trust business, built one relationship at a time, over years, not transactions.
For a long time, Ateca worked across several sectors, the way most recruitment firms do. But the deeper I went into private banking specifically, the clearer it became that this industry deserves — and rewards — a different kind of search partner. One who understands the difference between a portable book and an inherited one. One who knows what a basis-point revenue floor actually means for a candidate’s compensation. One who treats a conversation with a senior banker about their career with the same discretion that banker
extends to their own clients every day.
That is the firm we have built. We do not try to be everything to everyone. We do one thing — private banking and wealth management
executive search — as well as it can be done, across the markets that matter most: the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.
If you are a bank building or refining a senior team, or a private banker considering what comes next, I would welcome a direct,
confidential conversation. Every mandate that comes through this firm still comes through me personally, and it will stay that way by
design.
Steve Slater
Founder & Chief Executive Officer