LONDON — B2B technology specialist Wildfire has restructured its management team in readiness for its planned next phase of growth, after completing its MBO debt repayment.

Managing director Debby Penton, who led the MBO in 2020, is moving up to a new CEO role, while client services director Louise Palmer and agency development director Chris King become joint managing directors of the £3 million business. Finance and operations director Andrew Shephard becomes COO.

Palmer (pictured, left) has been with Wildfire since 2004 and King (right) has been with the agency since 2006. Together, they will be responsible for day to day running of the agency – which currently has a team of 32 – and implementation of its business plan.

As part of her new role, Penton will work with the agency’s demand generation director Paula Fifield to raise the profile of Wildfire and KT2, its new B2B creative content agency, which was launched in March.

Penton told PRovoke Media the agency was planning to double in size over the next three years: “Ever since we put the MBO in place we’ve been thinking about what the future should look like. Louise and Chris have been instrumental in the position we’ve got to now, and I have a huge amount of trust in them.

“With the MBO paid off, we have aggressive goals – including being more ambitious about the creative, strategic work we do for clients – and I wanted them to realise their ambition and take control of the business. I want to move out of the way for them to do what they want to do; I’m mindful of making sure they feel sure they have a future with the business.”

Wildfire’s clients include Samsung, Epson, Cloudflare, Bango, Inrupt, FullStory and Confluent. The agency is B Corp-pending and is a member of the PROI global independent agencies network.