Kantar Hires Brand Guidance Product and M&A Leaders

In the US, Kantar has appointed former SurveyMonkey exec Chuck Brinker as Brand Guidance Product team Lead, starting next month; and Christoph Haschka as Group Director of Mergers and Acquisitions.

Brinker joins after seven years at SurveyMonkey (now Momentive), where he served as VP/GM, responsible for the launch and management of the Market Research Solutions product suite. Prior to this he spent five years with Edelman, as SVP of the firm's Insights and Analytics business in Chicago, and he was a brand strategist at McCann World Group, having begun his career in B2B product marketing at AT&T.

Haschka most recently served as Group CEO of The Food Solutions Group, which he joined in 2016 as SVP of Mergers and Acquisitions. He also spent several years as an independent consultant, after leadership roles in the Investment Banking TMT teams at Macquarie Capital and UBS. Earlier in his career, he held corporate strategy and development roles at Mannesmann AG, Orange and Liberty Global. In their new positions, Brinker will report to Chief Product Officer Ted Prince, and Haschka will report to Ian Griffiths, Deputy CEO and Chief Financial Officer.

Commenting on the appointments, Griffiths said: 'Brand Guidance is a strategic growth platform for Kantar and Chuck's expertise in building AI- and ML-infused applications and making analytics more user-friendly will be key in further advancing our innovation agenda and delivering more valuable insights to our clients. Christoph will head up our group M&A team and brings us deep experience across the TMT landscape and a track record of generating and closing M&A transactions'.

Web site: www.kantar.com .