KPMG Announce New Crown Dependencies Practice

Featured Blog Image

The KPMG firms in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man announced the merger of their businesses to form a single practice operating across the Crown Dependencies. This creates a professional services business of 430 people, locally owned and dedicated to serving the key industry sectors across the three islands.

The combined practice forms a core part of the KPMG Islands Group, made up of International Financial Centres and Overseas Territories spanning a sub-region which extends from Malta to the Caribbean. This grouping works closely with other KPMG practices in major global financial centres such as London and New York, ensuring that clients can benefit from an optimal blend of local and global expertise from KPMG’s network.

Neale Jehan, based in Guernsey, who will be the inaugural Senior Partner of the new Crown Dependencies business, commented, “As leading firms in each of our islands, it made sense to align ourselves so that we can leverage a larger pool of staff and specialists to meet our clients’ expectations, and invest together in driving growth and operational efficiency. The new practice is wholly owned by its local partners who will continue to make decisions quickly that are right for our jurisdictions. As the world works closer virtually cross-border, the historic boundaries of how we deliver our services are being lost and we are stronger and more flexible together. We are nevertheless proud of our local roots and will continue to be active in our communities supporting causes that are meaningful to our partners and staff.”

Russell Kelly, based in the Isle of Man, who will be the Head of Advisory in the new practice and who leads the Isle of Man office commented, “This brings us together as a single practice and will allow us to further enhance our seamless delivery to clients across the Crown Dependencies with the largest Crown Dependency based advisory and taxation business providing access to deeper advisory and taxation specialisms based in our islands.  Having a larger, single tax and advisory business is a cornerstone of our strategy as the UK profession move towards a future of increased audit operational separation.”

The businesses have worked more closely together over the last three months and legally formalised the merger to take effect from 1 January 2021. Clients will have access to wider specialists located across the expanded business and in time some engagements may transition to new corporate entities created by the merger, but in the meantime it is business as usual, with client relationships maintained as they currently are to minimise disruption.

Neale stated, “We have had a strong start to the new financial year and we are confident about the growth opportunities arising in the post-COVID new reality. Our islands work with industry sectors that are predicted to remain buoyant post COVID, particularly Private Equity, Insurance and Digital and it is incumbent on us and government to ensure that we invest in the people and expertise to drive the quality of what we do and capture some of that growth for the islands, against the many external challenges that we face. Our future will be defined by bold decision making today and we need to work together, for better, across our islands”.

 

Share
  • Recent Posts