On the move: the latest East Midlands hires

Foresight Group, the private equity investment manager, has promoted Nottingham-based Seb Saywood to director in its Private Equity team.

Saywood has been with Foresight since 2013, having joined as a senior investment manager to deploy the Foresight Nottingham Fund out of the newly opened office in Nottingham. He sits on the board of four investments in Foresight’s portfolio and supports the management of more than £240m of
funds, investing up to £5m nationally with a particular focus in Nottingham and the broader Midlands.

Saywood said: “It has been another high growth year at Foresight and I’m delighted to be a part of that growth journey. 2017 is already shaping up to be very exciting as we continue to develop our Midlands presence.”

Midlands-based PKF Cooper Parry has made 68 new appointments across its East and West Midlands offices, taking the total number of new jobs created over the past 12 months into three figures.

The firm is the fastest growing firm of accountants in the UK and is enjoying an unprecedented number of new client wins. It has now boosted its already expanding team with the appointment of a further 68 experienced team members ahead of another planned period of growth.

Some of the new staff at PKF Cooper Parry

The biggest area of growth has been in the audit team, where 43 new team members have been recruited. Appointments have been made across the Midlands, with additions to the audit, pensions and financial outsourcing teams.

Key appointments include Ed Gray, who joins the team as director of transaction services and Ian Ball and Melanie Hopwell, who have been appointed audit managers. Rachel Tattershall and Natasha Clarke have also joined the audit team in the East Midlands as audit senior and audit manager respectively. More new faces are set to join the team in the coming months.

In the tax team, Krista Fox has been appointed partner and Suki Kaur has been appointed director. Jeremy Birch has joined the firm as restructuring director.

Further appointments have been made across the restructuring, wealth, corporate finance, service charge and IT solutions teams. The firm’s internal support teams have received a boost too, with new appointments to its people team and administration and payroll teams.

Experienced dealmaker Phil Hinson joins the team as director of corporate finance and the audit team has also received a significant boost to numbers.

The leadership team has also been strengthened. Whilst continuing as chairman, Jeremy Bowler has taken on a new role of head of client services.

Fiona Holland joins the firm as new head of sales and marketing from Gateleys. Fiona has a wealth of experience in developing new business and leading creative campaigns.

April Bembridge has joined the firm as head of people, with a new head of finance set to be announced shortly.

These latest appointments take the number of new posts created over the past 12 months to 110