Recruitment industry veteran Tony Martin has joined The Empresaria Group, which owns a series of recruitment companies, as its non-executive chairman.

Martin was chief executive and chairman of Vedior, the world’s third largest staffing services group, until his retirement in February this year. Before that, he was both chief executive and chairman of NASDAQ and London-listed Select Appointments, which was bought by Vedior in 1999.

Martin becomes one of the largest investors in Empresaria Group. On his appointment he was issued with 1.8m shares, and had already bought 325,000 privately, putting his share in the company at around 7%.

Martin was introduced to Empresaria through one of its recruitment companies, McCall, after he expressed an interest in helping the company expand.

Martin said he was attracted to the firm because of its similarities to Select in its early days.

“Empresaria has experienced rapid growth over the last few years, focusing on specialist staffing markets and enabling management teams to acquire significant shareholdings in start-ups and acquisitions,” he said.

Empresaria’s finance director, Nick Hall-Palmer, said he hoped Martin’s profile and experience would help the company to attract new start-ups looking for capital and smooth the route for new acquisitions. “This is a massive coup for us; he’s as good a person as we could hope to have on board,” he said.