History

Founded in 2006, Hugessen Consulting was created to respond to rapidly growing demand from boards and their compensation committees for direct access to objective and independent advice. The forces that led to its creation arose first in the 1990s, as concerns over the level of executive pay became widespread.

Ken Hugessen, at that time a leader of one of North America's premier compensation practices with Mercer who has been advising clients on executive compensation since the early 1980's, was one of the first consultants to assist compensation committees to understand and respond to the issues they face.

As early as 1995 Ken has written about the role of the board in executive compensation and his belief that the board, not management, was the client that compensation consultants should be serving.

A decade later, consultants advising the board directly on executive pay had become common, but under serious scrutiny. The question was: were they really working for the board or were they working for management? Did they provide unbiased advice or were they hampered by conflicts of interest? Ken's seminal 2002 article "Raising the Bar" was shown to be prescient in identifying these important issues. By the mid 2000s, the market was demanding that executive compensation consultants be completely and visibly free of conflicts of interest. The situation parallels what happened to auditing firms who had to part with their consulting functions to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.

Recognizing these issues, in June 2006 Ken joined forces with Georges Soaré, an accomplished executive and corporate director with 20 years of experience, to set up Hugessen Consulting as a new and independent business. As a Founding Partner, Georges brought extensive experience as a private equity investor and board member, complemented by previous experience in corporate development, investment banking and corporate/securities law. Behind the leadership of the Founding Partners, within its first full year of operation, the firm grew rapidly from a new startup to the second largest executive compensation practice in Canada by revenue.

In 2008, the firm made an important first step towards fulfilling its mission to be a top consulting firm with national and international presence.  Scott Munn was appointed as Partner to build the firm’s practice in Western Canada and head Hugessen Consulting’s new Calgary office. Scott has over 12 years of experience advising directors and senior management on executive compensation and related performance and governance matters, the last seven of which as the leader of the Calgary compensation practice of a global human resources enterprise.