Deloitte strengthens its South West leadership team

News
11/07/2017

Business advisory firm Deloitte has made six senior appointments within its South West practice. It has strengthened its leadership team by promoting three of its people to partner and appointing three directors, a new tax director and new financial advisory director via internal promotions and the third a newly appointed risk advisory director.

The newly promoted South West partners are David Clements in risk advisory, Duncan Milne in consulting and Adam Powell in tax.

In his new role, David Clements will be a partner in the national retail conduct team in risk advisory, leading the regional team which is based across four offices in the South West as well as Scotland. The team focuses on regulatory change affecting financial services organisations and works with businesses in various sectors, including retail banking, insurance and wealth management. The team provides advice, support and assurance on the management of conduct risk.

“As partner, I am looking forward to further developing and growing the team and continuing to work with and support our leading financial services clients on interesting and challenging projects,” said Clements. “Over the last nine years I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of great people on a variety of rewarding projects in the South West, UK and Europe and want to build on these trusted and strong relationships.”

David, who grew up in Bristol, joined Deloitte in 2008 after having worked in the financial services industry for 11 years in a variety of roles predominantly in the retail banking sector.

Duncan Milne will be the consulting partner leading nationally on building the firm’s technical delivery capability for robotics and cognitive automation, providing innovative solutions to clients across a range of sectors. His teams focus on helping businesses make the right decisions about disruptive technologies to enable them to grow in a fast-moving environment, supporting them as they change the way they operate, how their customers interact with them and how their people work.

“Disruptive technologies such as robotics and automation bring new opportunities for businesses to provide high value products and services,” said Milne. “Innovation helps to create new markets and reshape established ones, transforming industries and changing the competitive landscape.”

Milne continued: “I am excited about my new role and look forward to helping clients to transform their businesses and form new business models to make the most of these two evolving technologies.”

Duncan, who was born in Keynsham and went to university in Exeter, joined Deloitte in 1992 after the software company he was working for in Bath was acquired by the firm. Over the last 25 years he has worked on many exciting projects, leading and delivering several large-scale complex technology transformation programmes for financial services clients, including various insurance companies. He also spent three years at Deloitte in New Zealand and Australia before returning to Bath to manage Deloitte’s European solution centre. Duncan has also undertaken several different secondments with clients in the UK and abroad in a range of roles, the last one as chief technology officer for a Scandinavian insurance group.

In his new role as tax partner, Adam Powell will lead the business tax practice for foreign owned companies on a regional level, while leading a national team focussed on the impact on foreign owned groups of aspects of the OECD’s work in the area of Base Erosion and Profit Shifting. He specialises in advising global groups that are headquartered outside of the UK, with a particular focus on groups HQ’d in the United States. His teams work with global and multinational businesses, advising them on the tax implications of expanding overseas, operating and growing in the UK, and understanding the impact of new tax legislation. Adam has a wealth of experience in advising clients in a number of industry sectors, including manufacturing, financial services, and the travel, hospitality, and leisure sector.

“The tax world is going through a period of real change so it’s an exciting field to work in, especially when you have an international focus,” said Powell. “It’s fascinating to work with and advise foreign-owned businesses that have invested in the UK. I am extremely proud to become a partner in our tax practice, and look forward to developing and strengthening the team so we can continue to help these organisations manage the increasingly complex tax landscape.”

Adam joined Deloitte when it took over Arthur Andersen in 2002. He has focused on business tax throughout his career and specialised in foreign owned companies for the last ten years. He’s worked in numerous cities, including Birmingham, Leeds, New York and London, before his move to Bristol. Adam spent two and half years in the United States as part of Deloitte’s International Core of Excellence, a US-based team of highly experienced, international tax practitioners from some of the largest countries and key financial centres, providing advice to global US headquartered groups. Whilst in the US, he also worked with UK Trade & Investment, talking to trade delegations, businesses and various business bodies.

The three new directors are Nick Comer in our indirect taxes team, Louise Durkan in restructuring services and Iain Leith who has joined the firm as a director in our risk advisory practice.

Nick Comer joined Deloitte in 2006 as a graduate in the Bristol tax practice, where he began to specialise in indirect taxes. As a director, he will now lead the national government and not-for-profit tax team with a particular focus on the South West and Wales region. The team helps clients to manage tax risk and identify opportunities for savings on their most complex business challenges. This will range from helping local charities determine whether they should be VAT registered, advising universities on how to navigate the tax complexities associated with developing a new campus, to helping government agencies identify irrecoverable VAT issues associated with structuring their IT procurement contracts.

“I’ve always had a keen interest in the public sector as it’s one of the most complex from a tax perspective and our clients often have the least resource to help manage these complexities,” said Comer. “I’m thrilled to be leading this specialist team both nationally and in the South West and Wales.”

Louise Durkan joined Deloitte in 2009 and has spent the last 20 years working in restructuring services in both Cardiff and Bristol. In her new role as director, Louise will lead the restructuring services team of 12 specialists based in Bristol alongside Richard Hawes, the partner that heads up this financial advisory team. She will also join the leadership group for the southern region restructuring services team that stretches from west and south Wales, throughout the south west and across to the south east of England. Louise and her Bristol team work with corporates and their stakeholders, advising underperforming or financially distressed or distressed businesses in a broad range of sectors.

“Each business I work with is unique and I enjoy getting to grips with their situation and working closely with a wide range of stakeholders, including lenders, boards of directors, shareholders, overseas parent companies, management and employees,” said Durkan. “I’m excited about this new role which will be a new challenge for me and I’m really looking forward to continuing to build and strengthen the team across the South West”.

Louise is the regional vice-chair of the R3 South West and Wales Committee. R3, also known as the Association of Business Recovery Professionals, is the trade association for the UK’s insolvency, restructuring, advisory, and turnaround professionals. From December, she will become regional chair.

Iain Leith was appointed a director in the risk advisory practice in May and will lead the technology risk consulting team based in Bristol. This team consists of 14 consultants who are technology risk and control experts, dedicated to supporting the delivery of a broad range of services that help clients across all sectors deal with challenges in areas where they may lack the right mix of technological skillset amongst their own staff.

The team’s primary focus is to help clients understand their technological risks and evaluate the effectiveness of controls they have in place to mitigate these risks, advising on gaps against industry or regulatory standards and recommending improvements. The team works on projects ranging from data governance and helping companies prepare for the new GDPR legislation that comes into effect in 2018, cyber risk and helping clients put security policies in place to detect attacks and minimise the risks of cyber threats, to IT risk management, ensuring that business systems are resilient and recoverable should there be an outage.

“Helping our clients to enhance their use of a risk management framework is key as it enables them to keep appraised of current and emerging risks,” said Leith. “We can use this to help them drive improved business performance and efficiency.”

Iain’s previous role was at KPMG but he has spent the majority of his career working in industry, primarily in the retail banking sector having worked at the Bank of Scotland for 16 years in various roles, and six years at Lloyds Banking Group latterly as head of IT audit.

Deloitte employs over 350 people in the South West at its offices in Bristol and Bath, including 25 directors and 27 partners.

Martyn Gregory, senior partner for Deloitte in the South West, said: “I’m delighted to be announcing these promotions as they are a clear example of how we are investing in our region and further strengthening our capabilities in the South West. As partners and directors, they’re now part of the leadership of our firm.

“It is testament to the quality of the people we have in our business and of the valuable work they are doing with our clients. They have built up extensive knowledge in their specialist areas and I’m sure they’ll continue to be successful in looking after our clients and leading their teams. There are few things more important to the success of our business than attracting, developing and retaining high quality people.”

Gregory continued: “I’m pleased to announce the appointment of Iain Leith who will head up our technology risk consulting team in the South West. Cyber security and IT risk management are top business priorities for our clients. Our risk advisory practice is going from strength to strength, helping organisations adapt and respond to new risks and take advantage of new opportunities to mitigate risk and make informed, intelligent risk decisions.”