What do you do?
I’m a Senior Manager in our specialist Pensions Audit Team here at Cooper Parry. I look after a portfolio of Pension Scheme clients of varying size and complexity, some of which are pure audit clients and also a number of accounts preparation and audit cases.
Why do you do it?
I have a real passion for pensions, I really enjoy how all Schemes are unique, no two Schemes are the same. I enjoy being able to deliver for our clients within their statutory deadline, but also growing relationships with Trustees and Administrators at the same time. At CP, we always provide pragmatic solutions, and we are always willing to get involved, no matter how ‘unusual’ a case may be!
What kind of projects have you been involved in?
I have been involved in a variety of projects working in the Pensions Team, ranging from accounts preparation, full audits, fraud cases, audit & accounts with limited data and also working on clients that are involved with the PPF. Some clients deadlines vary and can be very tight, but we always deliver.
What’s on top of your bucket list?
I don’t have a bucket list. If there are things I think I would like to do, I try and make it my priority to ensure I can.
What do you do?
I help build relationships with businesses through our audit and tax services. Working alongside our Partners and Business Development colleagues, I talk with and visit potential new clients. Our aim is always to truly understand the business and personalities we’re talking with and their aims, challenges and what’s most important to them in an advisor. Once we understand who we’re talking with, we know where we can add value to their business and can create a proposal reflecting this.
I’m a point of contact through a sales process and help with the organising and moving the process forward. Me doing this role allows our Partners to get on with what they do best – looking after clients.
Why do you do it?
I had a close friend who kept telling me about this amazing new job she had. It was at CP. The more I heard about it, the more I liked what I heard and wanted to be part of it. I started working as a PA in the Audit team for a few years. After some time on Maternity leave, I was given the opportunity to join the Business Development team. I’d been in sales roles before and so when one of the team told me there was a role, I had to go for it.
I’ll always be grateful to my friend for helping me become part of CP! Working here has changed my outlook. I no longer get the ‘Monday morning blues’ and going to work is something I look forward to. The freedom and trust you’re given at CP to get on with things how you see fit, to try new ways and not fear failure and to work for a business where you feel you can make a real difference is truly empowering.
What kind of projects have you been involved in?
I am gaining experience, having discussions now with business owners, managing directors and finance directors who can go on to become Cooper Parry clients. Every service line we have is solely geared to driving value to these clients. I’m very lucky to be one of the first people to meet these prospective clients and hear about their successes, failures and journey as a whole. Our knowledge just gets stronger and stronger and the advice we’re giving and opportunities we’re spotting are getting better and better. I love hearing from new clients about how much they enjoy working with us.
What’s on top of your bucket list?
I have a long list and it’s hard to pick just one thing, but for me the ultimate and the most important thing to me is my little boy Teddy. Having fun, lots of adventures and making him happy.
What do you do?
I support all the background recruitment activities for CP. I promote CPs brand, help candidates navigate their journey through the recruitment process and support our Recruitment Business Partners and teams.
Why do you do it?
Initially recruitment was something I fell into, it wasn’t something I was looking for, it found me. Thankfully! I love working with people and getting involved in the nitty gritty. And after all, it’s easy to promote your work place when you love working there!
What kind of projects have you been involved in?
I look at ways to connect CP with interesting prospective candidates, and assist on improving the candidate journey and our ways of working.
What’s on top of your bucket list?
It’s a never ending list for me – but on the top of the list would travel. I would love to go to Thailand, India, Mexica, road trip through America and trekking through Canada.
What do you do?
I assist early stage businesses with various finance related activities, from setting up software solution to producing rich and robust management information to enable the decision making process.
Why do you do it?
I have always worked with early stage businesses due you their desire to disrupt marketplaces, challenge the status quo and push forward society with meaningful change.
What kind of projects have you been involved in?
I have assisted clients or various exciting projects since joining CP.
To name a few;
– setting up, the finance function for a Swedish inbound tech company, therefore allowing them to remotely monitor activity in the UK and have comfort everything was being taken care of by us
– assisting a scaling F&B company with their year-end function and rectifying historical issues in advance of the first audit next year
What’s on top of your bucket list?
Travel – getting back to random European city breaks in a post covid environment
What do you do?
I am an all singing, all dancing Corporate Tax Partner (quite literally – read on and it’ll all make sense!) My primary focus is to engage with clients to establish their current business goals and understand the direction in which their business is going. By understanding their commercial aims, I work with clients to spot tax planning opportunities and identify areas in which tax charges can be mitigated.
Why do you do it?
As a born to be performer and starring in the West End as a teenager, my sights were originally set on Hollywood! Thankfully, it came to my attention that there was one place that hit Hollywood out of the park – Cooper Parry!
Here at CP, I can do what I love every day – work with great people and great clients. My passion is building and nurturing excellent working relationships with my clients and gaining a deep understanding of their businesses so that I am best placed to offer them invaluable tax advice. I find it particularly rewarding helping businesses with their taxation affairs especially when this leads to opportunities. For one client, my keen eye for tax planning led to tax savings in excess of £1m!
What kind of projects have you been involved in?
I have looked after a wide range of clients varying in industry from high profile fashion, premiership football clubs, property development/investment groups, hotels, bars, restaurants, student accommodation, serviced offices, recruitment, digital media, influencers, healthtech, fintech and proptech to name but a few! My experience ranges from dealing with owner-managed businesses to large corporate groups.
I like to be with my clients for the journey servicing them across a range of services from year-end compliance, R&D, EMI share options / other equity participation schemes, raising finance (EIS, SEIS, VCT), restructuring, international expansion, due diligence and any other business or financial advisory matters leading up to an exit event and supporting them through this process.
What’s on top of your bucket list?
I am a huge football fan so it would have to be watching England play at the World Cup or the Euro! There’s nothing quite like the atmosphere of a football game so I can’t imagine how exciting a match would be in a global tournament. The dream would be to see England lift the trophy! With the current squad, I’m confident that it’s only a matter of time.
What do you do?
As Head of Operations for Cooper Parry’s Tech & High Growth Team, I oversee the day-to-day operations of my department whilst aiding senior management in developing long-term business strategies for success. I have gained over a decade of experience in the UK accounting space before my current role.
Why do you do it?
Oddly, I thrive in the chaos that others loathe. I am passionate about finding solutions to everyday problems whilst tackling issues that cause difficulty to others in the business. The engine room of any organisation is its operations team, and it fills me with great satisfaction knowing that my hard work supports the success of so many others.
The accounting world has changed dramatically over the last decade, and the fast-paced digital revolution shows no signs of slowing down. I take great satisfaction in using technology to turn those everyday problems into solutions, and our ecosystem has no shortage of exciting companies that will continue to positively change our sector for years to come.
I stumbled my way into accounting via an administration apprenticeship, which was a perfect springboard to pursue this career. If I’m being honest, it all happened by accident, but I wouldn’t change it for the world!
What kind of projects have you been involved in?
I have broad experience working for businesses of all shapes and sizes, from high-street accounting firms to global investment banks, and each has provided me the opportunity to work on unique and exciting projects.
I’m proud to have led a program of work to successfully navigate policy change in relation to the UK’s Off-Payroll (IR35) reforms, as well as managing the end-to-end lifecycle of Acclivity, up until our recent merger with Cooper Parry.
Additionally, I’m proud to have co-founded the online content and learning platform, The Finance Department ™, which continues to be a market-leading, indispensable resource for entrepreneurs and their finance teams.
What’s on top of your bucket list?
I am fortunate to have travelled extensively across this little planet we call home, but there are still many countries on my bucket list, not namely Japan!
In 2018, I proposed to my now-wife at the top of Kilimanjaro, and I’d love to return to Africa with our young family in years to come to show them where it all began.
Having also been born and bred in Cheltenham, horse racing has been a part of my life since I care to remember, and so owning my own racehorse, who will be called Brother Dave, also ranks highly.
What do you do?
I am a Partner and Head of Early Stage in the Tech & High Growth Team. I work closely with early-stage founders and entrepreneurs across all accounting, tax and advisory disciplines. More than anything, my role is to cultivate a personal relationship with the earliest members of a founding team and help them navigate their journey to scale.
Why do you do it?
Fundamentally, I do it because I enjoy it but more deeply, I cherish the opportunity to play a role in helping talented people succeed.
Over the years, I have always been in the unique position of being an entrepreneur that advises entrepreneurs, and that vantage point has always helped me cultivate a special empathy for founders. I don’t love spreadsheets, but I love asking questions that spreadsheets can answer.
We are lucky to have the very best talent within our team and so whether founders need advice, introductions or just a steady pair of hands; the relationship they share with us tends to be the only place they can get all three.
Ultimately, my passion is driven by treating each client as a personal challenge to see them win. Early-stage tech is hard enough as it is, and I see what we do as providing founders with an edge.
What kind of projects have you been involved in?
Having worked in this sector for almost my entire career, I have been involved in a range of all sorts of interesting projects. The fun examples include advising a machine learning startup from incorporation to a multi £m exit within two years, designing a brand ambassador contract between a tech company and a hip-hop artist, all the way to working on a bid to acquire a Premiership football team.
My relationship is always with the founder and so the variety of conversations always follows their journey.
As well as the above, being early-stage focused has also led to acting as a specialist advisor in situations involving SEIS/EIS, share option schemes and the tax incentives landscape. All the above has afforded me the opportunity to sit on multiple UK Government boards and advise on the tech ecosystem.
What’s on top of your bucket list?
In my mind, I have always thought of a bucket list of things that you do not truly believe are achievable.
Thankfully, my experience of life has been that everything else is just a series of intentions and actions. With that being the case, I will learn to play the piano and the guitar having started and stopped many times before & also complete my pilot’s license. Longer term, I would like to continue my personal passion project in helping with alleviating hunger and reaching a personal target of facilitating 1 million meals.
Bucket List: Fly an F16.
What do you do?
I am an Analyst within the Corporate Finance Team. Within my role, I assist across a range of functions. These include mapping markets, critically assessing potential targets, qualifying, and creating buyer pools for sell-side deals, and contributing to pitch work.
Why do you do it?
I have had an interest in Finance since I was young, so to be able to put this into practice and work within such a fantastic Corporate Finance team excites me. Helping people to realise the value of their hard work always has a good feeling to it.
What’s on top of your bucket list?
I am massively into my food, especially Japanese. It is a dream of mine to visit Japan and travel around, soaking in the culture and great cuisine.
What do you do?
I initially joined Cooper Parry as a Strategic Adviser in the summer of ‘22, working closely with our CEO, Ade Cheatham and the broader Leadership team with a major focus on supporting the execution of our ambitious growth plans. On 1 February 2023, I joined the firm as a Partner to lead our CP Deals business which comprises our lead advisory, transaction services and transaction tax businesses. My role is to lead and grow the Deals business alongside the firm’s broader growth plans, as well as looking for opportunities to broaden our advisory services.
Why do you do it?
Always a great question. I suppose having been in professional services for thirty-five years (previously as a partner at Deloitte and more recently Alvarez & Marsal), I recognise that I’ve always loved growing businesses as well as developing the people within those firms. Helping them achieve their ambitions and realise their full potential is wonderfully rewarding.
During my time at Deloitte, I was fortunate to have spent five years as the Global Leader of one of Deloitte’s five businesses, Financial Advisory and at Alvarez & Marsal was responsible for strategy and growth for the EMEA Region for four years during which we trebled the size of the business. When the opportunity at Cooper Parry came along, I couldn’t resist the chance to work with such a highly successful and ambitious team. The vision is bold. The culture is ground-breaking. And the next few years look set to be seriously exciting. I was delighted to be asked to join Cooper Parry as a Partner to lead the growth of our Deals business leveraging all the experience from my previous roles.
What kind of projects have you been involved in?
I’ve been lucky enough to spend my entire career working with exciting clients both in the UK and globally – as a Relationship Partner, as well as advising clients on numerous M&A transactions. As a result, I’ve been exposed to countless different types of clients, sectors and, importantly, different cultures. As an example, I started my career in London with Arthur Andersen (later became Deloitte) in 1987 in audit. I was fortunate to join the “high growth” business team and one of my first clients was WPP Group which was created by Sir Martin Sorrell in 1985.
Over the almost 20 years I was involved with WPP, I saw the group grow exponentially through numerous acquisitions (large and small across literally every country in the world) to become the world’s largest marketing services group. I feel very proud to have been involved in supporting WPP on this breath-taking journey.
What’s on top of your bucket list?
A very long list unfortunately. I’m trying to find more time for my family as well as my passions which include skiing, cycling, boating and classic cars. However, top of the list is the goal that has so far eluded me: to become fluent (almost) in Spanish. This is mainly to avoid being ridiculed at home! Que sera sera, as they say.
What do you do?
I work in the Concierge team at Sky View. Every day is different. From meeting and greeting clients through to organising social events for staff and the everyday running of the office facilities. If you want a mean cup of tea – just ask me.
Why do you do it?
I love the variety, there’s always something new happening. No two days are ever the same. I have always been a people person. I love to make people happy and here at CP I get to do that every day. It’s very rewarding and that’s why I love it.
What kind of projects have you been involved in?
I have my own projects such as organizing the children’s Christmas party, bring your dog to work day and Halloween events. I enjoy planning staff trips out. From the Halloween Scarefest at Alton towers to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park.
I also look after Olive our catering team at Sky View. I come up with fun food themes for staff and clients to celebrate different cultures and days. I work alongside the events team here at CP. Helping with the hosting of seminars and meetings.
What’s on top of your bucket list?
I don’t really have a bucket list. But I would love to take a month out to travel around Scotland with my partner Luke in our camper. Walking our 2 dogs Teddy and Eric in the fresh air. Visiting as many places as we can. Taking in all the breath-taking views of the Highlands.