The Liverpool office of business and financial advisers Grant Thornton is celebrating further strong growth, having increased fee income from £6.4m in 2005 to £7.0m in 2006; a rise of almost 10 per cent. The substantial growth has come as a result of high profile client work and some notable personnel appointments across the practice.

Commenting on the success of the Merseyside practice, Office Managing Partner, John Shinnick, says: “We are experiencing continued profitable growth, both in client wins and personnel appointments and as we continue to grow, we will ensure that the family environment that we promote within the office continues to exist.

“Our ongoing recruitment strategy has been instrumental in the growth of the Liverpool office over the past year. Our special projects team has doubled in size in the past 12 months and has benefited from the recent appointments of Rowan Porter and Karen Taylor and the promotion of Angharad Davies to manager. The team, led by partner Howard Hackney, has worked on a variety of projects including LLP conversions, family business succession planning, business mentoring and completion of MBI in the retail sector.”

Shinnick continues: “Our tax team was also significantly strengthened by the appointment of Rob Hales from the Big Food Group Plc, who has brought specialist knowledge in advising large corporates to the team. We also recruited Patricia Griffiths from PwC to add weight to our Private Client Services offering, while Assurance saw the promotion of Carl Williams to Partner. We are determined to continue identifying talent in the region and increasing our head count, which has grown to 111 from 98, this time last year.”

The Liverpool office, based in the famous Liver Building, is currently seeking out more talent and expertise in Merseyside, with eight new positions now waiting to be filled, to ensure that clients continue to receive the Partner facing service that they require.

Shinnick continues: “Merseyside is performing well as a whole at the moment and this dynamism is causing the rest of the country and overseas investors to sit up and take notice of this fantastic city. Our appointments to work with clients such as Typhoo Tea demonstrate the capabilities of the team to deliver cross service line solutions to businesses, regardless of their size, and we are confident that we will continue to attract such clients well into our new financial year.”

ENDS

Press contact: Anna Simpkins/Meg Pugh @ MC2 – 0161 236 1352