BDO has appointed Duncan Chandler as a new partner in its national mergers and acquisitions (M&A) team. He joins BDO as the head of financial services in BDO’s M&A team. He was previously at advisory firm, Cavendish Corporate Finance. Chandler has a number of years of experience within the financial services sector and specifically within the mid-market. His role at BDO will see him cover all areas of financial services with a core focus on lending, specialty finance, wealth management and capital markets. Since January, BDO has appointed eight external and 20 internal individuals as partner.

Crowe has appointed Emma Locken as corporate tax partner, building on the firm’s strong tax offering. She joins the firm PwC where she was a tax director and has over 15 years’ experience advising UK and multinational businesses on their direct tax obligations. Locken specialises in working with listed businesses in the FTSE 250 and AIM markets across a range of industry sectors, with particular experience in the natural resources space. Her responsibilities range from advising businesses on tax structuring and transactional work, to ensuring tax compliance and reporting obligations are met. 

UHY Hacker Young, the national accountancy group, has promoted IT director Chris Hand to partner in the London office. He joined UHY Hacker Young in 1994 in an IT support role, before progressing to IT manager and most recently IT director. Hand has been instrumental in modernising UHY Hacker Young’s suite of technology, from driving the move from DOS and Lotus to Windows and Office. Critically, he has recently led the hugely successful overnight transition to remote working during the pandemic.

Mazars has appointed Graham Bearman to lead its real estate valuations team. He joins the team from Cluttons and will focus on further expanding Mazars’ real estate valuation services, working on a range of real estate clients including funds, investors, banks, corporates, occupiers, public sector, listed groups and developers. As a fellow of the RICS and Registered Valuer, Graham brings over 26 years of experience to the firm, having worked across a wide range of property sectors and sub-sectors within the UK and overseas. In addition, he also has over 10 years’ experience in the accounting and auditing arena providing reviews and analysis of valuations, restructuring, tax, due diligence, lease advisory and business combination valuations.

South west financial experts Old Mill has appointed tax specialist Stephen Martin as senior tax adviser, where he will use his expertise in share valuation, share schemes, research and development, mergers and acquisitions and start-up advice. He qualified as an ACA in 2008 and worked at Moore Stephens in London where he trained in the business tax team. During his 10 years at the firm, Stephen progressed through to associate director and worked primarily with owner-managed SMEs across the financial services, shipping, and hospitality sectors covering a wide range of sectors. Most recently he worked at Bishop Fleming in the west country as a director in the tax team.

Grant Thornton UK LLP has announced a flurry of new hires and promotions in its north west corporate finance team. Alex Parry joins the team as an assistant manager from a Big Four firm, where she spent more than five years after graduating. Also joining the firm is Humza Khan; an experienced mid-market deal originator with particular expertise in private equity and M&A activity. Internally manager Rachael Taplin has moved to the corporate finance team from the audit division. Cariad Mudford has been promoted to associate director while Alex Hirst and Amy Huddleston have both been promoted to manager.

Offshore law firm Carey Olsen has appointed Tiffy Wan as a senior associate in the firm's Hong Kong corporate practice. Wan specialises in offshore corporate transactional matters, with particular expertise in commercial and corporate finance transactions, including Hong Kong and US-based initial public offerings, secondary securities offerings, restructurings (including schemes of arrangement), mergers and acquisitions, and cross-border investments.

Untied, the personal tax app specialist, has hired David Buchalter as engineering manager. In this role, he will work with the development team to help design, build and deliver untied products in an agile way. He joins from Meditech South Africa where he spent over seven years as a software engineer, managing the delivery of a range of service improvement and development projects.

Spence & Partners, the pensions advisory service, has appointed Susan Greenwood as a senior investment consultant to support the further expansion of the firm’s investment consulting proposition. She has more than 20 years’ experience working in the investment consultancy industry and joins from Mercer, where she was a principal investment consultant.

Apex Litigation Finance has hired two new advisors, Jan Buza and Jozef Maruscak, specialising in employing artificial intelligence technology in litigation funding. Most recently Buza co-founded and headed up product development at Trama, a legal tech company specialised in building an AI-powered trademark registration service. Maruscak was most recently a partner and head of business development at Sudolabs, a company building software products for Silicon Valley start-ups.

The British Business Bank has appointed Dr Sophie Dale-Black as a director in its UK network team in the Midlands and north of England. She was previously regional director for the Midlands at the ICAEW. In her new role, Dale-Black will focus on helping enhance the region’s small business finance ecosystem, to support smaller businesses access finance.

Finzo, the accountancy tech start-up, has appointed Kevin Dunn as solutions director, responsible for advising clients on app integrations to automate data processes. He has more than 15 years’ experience advising businesses on using software and cloud accounting services.

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