IP Reference Checks
Judges Scientific is a UK-based holding company that owns a portfolio of niche scientific instrumentation manufacturers. We've followed the business closely for 6+ years for multiple reasons:
On the 26th of November 2025 , David Cicurel (76 years old) announced he is stepping down as CEO and Tim Prestidge would be his replacement. Over the past months, we’ve conducted several hours of interviews with former colleagues and direct reports of Tim’s at Renishaw and Halma including:
This report is structured to highlight the main learnings about Tim’s character and business acumen from first-hand stories and experiences. The learnings are organised around the core drivers of Judges Scientific's long-term performance, including BU operations and capital deployment.
This report is part of a new subscription tier at IP. Contact sales for access. No onward distribution is permitted
We have an internal research team focused on sourcing executives that worked closely with or reported to the Target CEO. Our team will vet each executive to understand the CEOs character and competence. We aim for a selection of executives with different perspectives on the Target CEO. Our internal team of investment research analysts conduct 5-10 hours of research per reference check and summarize our findings relating to the individual, company culture, and how it may link to the investment thesis. We also have a team of forensic investigators scouring court filings and other public documents historically to build a picture of the target CEO. The report and all interviews, filings, sources are made available supporting the work.
We're focused on quality over quantity. We aim for ~15 checks per year to focus us on sourcing the most relevant executives to help us understand the Target CEO. We only publish reference checks if we can source the right executives and believe the work is incremental to long-term shareholders.
It costs anywhere between $15-40k to produce each report including the executive interviews, forensic investigation costs, and analyst time.
We focus on understanding leaders that we may wish to invest in. We also prioritise leaders or executives that are new, unknown, or polarising.
We aim to have a rolling coverage list of ~30 companies at all times; our sourcing team is constantly searching for executives from these companies and we publish the reference check when we feel we have enough sources and information to give us an incremental perspective.
IP References are not available on our core library subscription tier.
There are three tiers of pricing for IP References:
IP References is not available widely on our core interview library subscription tier because the research focuses on individuals and companies where confidentiality and limited distribution is critical to sourcing high-quality executives willing to share candid perspectives.