Kay Johnson Gee has estimated fee income of £5m and employs more than 60 staff with five partners. It was set up in 1948 and is based in central Manchester.

The partners, Julian Beressi, Roger Blaskey, Alan Fallows, Mike Garrett and Alex White, along with corporate finance director Steve Lindsay, will continue to run the firm, under the auspices of the Xeinadin group, but the firm will retain its own brand identity.

The move follows the announcement that around 120 firms, including sole practitioners and a number of £1m-£5m revenue firms are coming together under the Xeinadin group umbrella, and will share services and technology. A spokesperson for the group told Accountancy Daily: ‘It’s not a network but operates like that from a cultural perspective.’

Founding Xeinadin member firms include Hallidays, Lewis Ballard, O’Connor Pyne & Co, Murray Associates, O’Brien & Partners, Bartax, Centurion and Cobham Murphy. The group was registered at Companies House in May 2018 and has eight directors, including Nigel Bennett, managing director of Hallidays Group Limited.

Julian Beressi, managing director of Kay Johnson Gee, is a chartered accountant with over 25 years’ experience of advising owner-managed businesses across all industries. As head of the forensic accounting team, he also works closely with solicitors and barristers preparing reports as an expert witness.

Beressi said: ‘We’ve followed this movement since May 2018. I have been very impressed with the organisation’s vision and ability to amalgamate a substantial community of accountants across both the UK and Ireland regions. Our firm has conducted much due diligence on the entire acquisition process.

‘We are impressed with both the ability to merge 120+ independent practices and the outlook for the firms to work together for mutual benefit. The support and advice by a top six accountancy practice and a leading legal practice has supported our decision to proceed into the Xeinadin consolidation. We can also confirm this is the first consolidation of its type and believe our practice and its clients can prosper from the “Firm of the Future” concept.’

Xeinadin will provide a shared services model and Beressi said his firm would be ‘able to support both the group and non-Xeinadin professional firms with both our corporate finance and business recovery specialisms’.

He added: ‘Our business recovery team is headed by Alan Fallows, who has over 25 years hands-on experience and is authorised by the ICAEW to undertake insolvency appointments in the UK. The Xeinadin Group can now offer the UK business market a comprehensive business insolvency service including, administration, receivership, creditors voluntary liquidation, compulsory liquidation and members voluntary liquidation.’

In a separate move, Xeinadin Group has added an Irish medical specialist accountancy firm to the group with the signing up of BCC Accountants, headed up by partners Alan Connolly and Sandra Clarke. Based in Ashbourne, Co. Meath, the firm employs 21 staff, with the two main partners having 20 years of experience in partnership.

Clarke said: ‘We join many others who are supporting this increasingly world-class accountancy model which is being built on the foundations of a vast level of practitioners’ experiences, knowledge, expertise and specialisms. When we pool this together then our existing and future clients can be best served.

‘As a firm we are embracing the latest use of technology to become more efficient and we believe that technological advances have made consolidation of this size and stature ripe for mass market penetration and growth.’

Sara White