Grant Thornton Insights

Please see below selected recent  intelligence about Grant Thornton.

 

June 2016

 

 

• In South Korea, Daejoo Accounting joined the Grant Thornton network, moving from BDO. The addition of Daejoo‘s 70 partners and 500 staff will make Grant Thornton the largest mid-tier firm in South Korea.

 

 

 

February 2016

 

 

• Grant Thornton UK LLP set out a five year strategic plan to build the business, grow the client base and expand opportunities for staff under the shared enterprise model. The strategic review, Vision 2020, is based on three cornerstones of ‘building trust and integrity in markets; unlocking sustainable growth for dynamic businesses; and creating environments in which business and people flourish’. This follows the launch of the mid-tier firm’s shared enterprise model, which has been running since July 2015, and is designed to share reward across the organisation. The three-year reward programme is designed to engage staff across the firm and create a more collaborative environment, where all level of employees up to and including partners, shape the future of the business and are able to contribute to innovation, business practice and growth.

 

　 

• Grant Thornton will reportedly begin sending compliance work to India in 2016. The decision to send work offshore brings Grant Thornton's practices in line with several of its peers. All of the big networks have been increasing their offshore activities in recent years to combat high labour costs, and be more flexible. Grant Thornton said the move was not about adding value, it was about "remaining competitive".

 

 

 

 

January 2016

 

 

• Grant Thornton appointed three new partners in the north of England Martin Barron, Rachel Engwell and Dan Rosinke all joined Grant Thornton’s Yorkshire team as the firm continues to invest in the growth of the practice. Rosinke joins as a partner in transaction advisory services, Barron as a partner in recovery and reorganisation and Engwell as a partner in tax. Rosinke joins from Yorkshire Bank where he was head of specialist and acquisition finance for east England. He spent over nine years at PwC prior to his ten years working in the banking sector. He will lead Grant Thornton’s transaction advisory and due diligence services to business in Yorkshire and the North East. Barron joins from Deloitte, where he had been working in the Yorkshire region since 2003. He will be working alongside partner Joe McLean on Grant Thornton’s Yorkshire and North East restructuring practice and will develop the service offering aligned to changing trends in the corporate funding market. Engwell joins from EY. She has more than 16 years’ experience working in the North West and North East. Engwell spent the last four years working as a tax director, advising both owner managed businesses and large private corporates across a variety of sectors. Andy Wood, practice leader for Grant Thornton in Leeds said the three new hires support the firm’s ambitious plans in the region.

 

 

 

December 2015

 

 

• The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that US national audit firm Grant Thornton LLP and two of its partners agreed to settle charges that they ignored red flags and fraud risks while conducting deficient audits of two publicly traded companies that wound up facing SEC enforcement actions for improper accounting and other violations. Grant Thornton admitted wrongdoing and agreed to forfeit approximately $1.5 million in audit fees and interest plus pay a $3 million penalty. Melissa Koeppel was an engagement partner on the deficient audits of both companies, and Jeffrey Robinson was an engagement partner on one of the deficient audits, which spanned from 2009 to 2011 and involved senior housing provider Assisted Living Concepts (ALC) and alternative energy company Broadwind Energy. An SEC investigation found that Grant Thornton and the engagement partners repeatedly violated professional standards, and their inaction allowed the companies to make numerous false and misleading public filings.

 

 

 

October 2015

 

 

• Grant Thornton (GT) reported largely unchanged UK revenue of £521 million for the financial year ending 30 June 2015, a 1.6% increase on the 2014 figure of £512 million, in results which were dented by a sharp drop in the restructuring and recovery income stream down by nearly a quarter year on year. GT reported profit before tax of £82 million, up marginally from £81.2 million year on year. Distributable profit per partner rose by 3.4% to £398,000, up from £385,000 the year before. Both the firm’s audit and tax lines of service turned in improved performances from the previous year. The audit service line saw an increase of 5% to £142 million (2014: £135.2 million), compared to a 4% increase in 2014, while tax revenue was up 5.5% to £96.3 million (2014: £91.3 million), having remained broadly flat last year.

 

 

• Meanwhile, Grant Thornton LLP, the U.S. member firm of Grant Thornton International Ltd, announced revenues of $1.45 billion for fiscal year 2015, which ended July 31, 2015. The figure is a record for the firm and represents a 6.9 percent increase over the previous fiscal year.

 

 

• The SEC recently charged Grant Thornton India LLP and Australia-based Grant Thornton Audit Pty Limited with auditor independence violations. These occurred when two Grant Thornton Mauritius partners served on the boards of Mauritius-based subsidiaries of companies that were Grant Thornton audit clients and performed non-audit services prohibited under the SEC’s auditor independence rules. According to the SEC's orders instituting settled administrative proceedings, the two Grant Thornton International LLP member firms represented in audit reports that they were independent of their respective audit clients when the audit clients paid fees to a consulting firm owned by two Grant Thornton Mauritius partners who served as board members for these audit clients.

 

 

 

September 2015

 

 

• Companies with diverse executive boards outperform peers run by all-male boards according to a new Grant Thornton (GT) study which covered listed companies in India, the UK and US. GT estimated the opportunity cost for companies with male-only executive boards (in terms of lower returns on assets) at US$655bn in 2014. "Women in business: the value of diversity" scrutinised the financial performance of companies listed on the S&P 500, CNX 200 and FTSE 350. Some progress has been made by women at a non-executive level, but the GT report focuseed on whether diverse executive teams - the people involved in day-to-day business operations - outperform male-only peers.

 

 

 

August 2015

 

 

• In the light of growing international interest and scrutiny of corporate practices, Grant Thornton set out to explore how three major aspects of governance - the role of culture, board composition and strategic planning - are affecting businesses around the world. Corporate governance: The tone from the top drew 1,865 telephone interviews with business leaders in 36 countries through GT's International Business Report (IBR), and 86 in-depth interviews with board directors in eight countries to answer five critical questions in corporate governance today.

 

 

• The latest ICAEW / Grant Thornton UK Business Confidence Monitor (BCM) showed that UK business confidence in 3Q 2015 improved for the first time in a year, as the decisive General Election result provided certainty for the year ahead. However confidence is still well below the all-time high seen a year ago, and the latest results suggests that chronic skills shortages and a fall in investment expectations are fostering increased uncertainties in the medium term.

 

 

 

June 2015

 

 

• Grant Thornton in Ireland is in advanced talks to absorb its smaller rival RSM Farrell Grant Sparks. It is understood that no money is changing hands, but the team from RSM Farrell Grant Sparks will become partners in Grant Thornton. They will eventually relocate to Grant Thornton’s offices on the quays in Dublin’s Docklands.

 

 

• Grant Thornton UK announced a technical and strategic collaboration with Foley O'Neill to provide specialist securities finance and collateral management consultancy services. Foley O'Neill provides financial services organisations with specialist, independent solutions across a range of financial products, including securities finance, collateral management, foreign exchange and cash/treasury management.

 

 

 

May 2015

 

 

• Grant Thornton acquired digital consulting firm Consult Point Group in Australia (trading as Consult Point & C9 Solutions) for an undisclosed sum. Grant Thornton will take on around 30 Consult Point staff in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. For Financial Review, the move shows how the "transformation of accounting practices into technology houses" is spreading from the big four firms to the mid-market.

 

 

• Grant Thornton plans to change its business model to become a ‘shared enterprise business’, where all of its 4,500 employees will have a stake in the company. In a recent vote, 99% of the firm’s 185 partners voted to launch a consultation on the implementation of a shared enterprise model, as proposed by CEO Sacha Romanovitch. The model will be a big departure from the traditional partner owned and run structure of professional services firms. The model will enable all employees to share responsibilities and rewards in the business, and staff will sit on Grant Thornton’s Oversight Board. It also aims to enable employees to better contribute their ideas, by crowdsourcing the firm’s delivery plan. Romanovitch said she believed a shared enterprise model would help the business grow.

 

 

 

April 2015

 

 

• The Managing Partners' Forum, a professional body that celebrates the value of leadership and management excellence,  named Grant Thornton as having the Best Programme for Leadership Development at its 2015 awards. Judged by an independent panel of subject matter experts, the award recognises the management team whose programme combines a clear analysis of leadership requirements with innovative interventions.

 

 

• John Harmeling joined Grant Thornton LLP as chief marketing officer, based in the firm’s Charlotte office. Harmeling will be responsible for all aspects of the marketing strategy, including brand management, integrated and content marketing, digital marketing and advertising, and sponsorships.

 

 

 

January 2015

 

• Grant Thornton announced record combined global revenues of US$4.7 billion This was driven by 4.6% growth in US dollars (4.9% in local currency) for the year ended 30 September 2014. “I am proud of our organisation's achievements in 2014 and all credit goes to our 40,000 people in 130 countries who every day are making a difference with clients, in their workplace and in their community,” said Ed Nusbaum, global CEO of Grant Thornton International Ltd. “Our goal going into 2015 is to continue to provide high quality services to our clients and to help them, and our people, unlock their potential for growth.”

 

 

• Grant Thornton broadened its assurance offering with the acquisition of niche auditors Recovery Cost Auditing Group (RCAG), which provides cost assurance to businesses by performing forensic audits of retrospective billing of energy and telecom costs. The firm finds deficiencies of charging structures and can go back six years identifying anomalies not always available to the end customer. Scott Barnes, CEO, Grant Thornton UK said; "This acquisition is part of our on-going strategy to broaden out our existing assurance offering for clients, and this is a great additional service to offer our dynamic client base, freeing up funds for them to reinvest in their business and help them grow."

 

December 2014

 

• Following two terms as CEO of Grant Thornton UK LLP, Scott Barnes' term is due to end in June 2015, and Sacha Romanovitch has been ratified by a vote of the partners as the CEO elect. Coinciding with this news, Barnes has been elected unanimously to take on the role of Chairman of the Grant Thornton International Board once his tenure as the UK CEO comes to an end.

 

• Grant Thornton has sold its Australian payroll division to US technology and business services company, EPI-USE Labs for an undisclosed sum. About 60 staff will move across to EPI-USE, including partner Rob Hughes, who led the division at GT. Grant Thornton will continue to offer payroll services to clients through an alliance with EPI-USE sister firm, groupelephant.com. Government agencies and hospitals are the major users of the service, to be re-branded "Rivor".

 

November 2014

 

• When Grant Thornton wanted to devise its latest global strategy, the accounting and advisory group did not call in a team from McKinsey or Bain. It organised a 72-hour online “jam” for its 38,500 staff worldwide.  “It was essential to us that we didn’t present a strategy that was done in a darkened room by people sitting round a table,” said Francesca Lagerberg, head of people and culture, who described the September jam as “like Facebook on speed”.

 

October 2014

 

• UK revenues grew 9% to £512m for the year ended 30 June 2014 - breaking the half-a-billion figure a year earlier than projected under its ‘Ambition 2015' strategy. Profits were up 7.7%, with distributable profit per partner up 10% to £385k - which included a change to the taxation of employee service companies midway through the year.

 

• Grant Thornton US said its FY 2014 revenue was the highest in its history at US$1.354 billion,  up 6.2% from the previous year. The revenue increase reflected organic growth along with the contributions of the Oracle Solutions business, which GT acquired at the start of FY 2014.

 

• Grant Thornton is taking aim at winning the audit accounts of more blue-chip UK businesses in an expected overhaul of the market. Grant Thornton is Britain's fifth largest accountant but has only one audit client in the FTSE 100. It is seen as the most likely beneficiary from the change in EU rules requiring companies to put their audits out to tender every decade.

 

June 2014

 

• Grant Thornton LLP’s Partnership Board named J. Michael (Mike) McGuire, 55, as the firm’s CEO-elect, succeeding Stephen Chipman on January. 1, 2015. McGuire most recently served on the firm’s Senior Leadership Team as national managing partner of operations. In this role, he chaired the firm’s Operating Committee and oversaw the firm’s human resources and marketing and sales teams. In addition, the regional managing partners and the Global Public Sector managing partner reported to him. He also chairs the Grant Thornton Foundation and serves on the Grant Thornton International Ltd Strategic Driver Execution Team.

 

March 2014

 

• Grant Thornton acquired Local Futures Group, an analytics research and strategy consultancy in the UK.

 

February 2014

 

• Grant Thornton acquired KPMG Australia’s Cairns practice in northern Queensland for an estimated A$4 million to A$5 million. The deal is part of a broader divestment strategy of regional offices not wedded to the KPMG partnership that use the KPMG brand under licence.

 

January 2014

 

• The US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board gave a failing grade to Grant Thornton on 65% of audits inspected in 2012, the highest failure rate ever registered in a single inspection report by a major firm. “The volume of findings in this report is concerning and of great importance to our dedicated professionals,” responded CEO Stephen Chipman. Grant Thornton  said it revised its audit methodology and training in 2012 based on concerns raised by the PCAOB about quality across the profession. 

 

• Grant Thornton announced record combined global revenues of US$4.5 billion driven by 8.1% growth in US dollars (8.9% in local currency) for the year ended 30 September 2013. Grant Thornton led the six major global accounting organisations in reported revenue growth rate in 2012, and does so again in 2013.