David Waller’s Nexus eyes £30m turnover
DAVID WALLER, chairman of Nexus, the new interim agency for high-level professional services, says the company is working towards a £30m turnover after three years – and is already attracting the interest of Magic Circle firms.
The company aims to provide accountants, lawyers and tax advisers, who have worked with large UK firms, to clients seeking experienced independent professionals to work on a contract or project basis.
Nexus wasn’t competing with the ‘Big Four’ or the major legal practices, said Mr Waller, but rather offering a complementary service.
He said: “We can’t offer a whole package, but can deliver specific expertise on a project basis.”
Former PwC senior partner Mr Waller, whose fellow directors include Birmingham business veterans Ian Forrest and Trevor Foster, said the Birmingham-based firm was filling a gap in the market that would get wider as legislative changes such as the Legal Services Act took hold.
He said: “As private equity starts seeing value in law firms, it can only access that by unlocking opportunity and eliminating duplication. Firms will increasingly seek to outsource more, lower-value products such as company secretarial services, to be free to concentrate on high value, premium niche services.
“Resources will be tighter overall, and it will be harder for even larger firms to be able to send in key staff to support clients on a medium term basis within their business. That’s where we come in.”
The business was also capitalising on changing career aspirations within the professional services community.
“We have three main groups. First, there are the highly competent technical experts for whom the partnership route is not an option, but they want to maximise their earning potential and perhaps vary their routine.
“Then there are people who have made lifestyle choices perhaps around family commitments, for whom the 24/7 culture of some firms is off-putting. Then there are those in the younger generation who increasingly want to have more flexibility to take time off and travel.”
Mr Waller, who is also chairman of Birmingham Chamber Group and a board member of the NEC Group, said Nexus would open a London office next week, with a team of four taking the service to law and accountancy practices in the City. The firm was already talking to one of the ‘Magic Circle’ firms, he said, about outsourcing one of its offrerings.
Mr Waller’s fellow directors are: Ian Forrest, partner at Squire Sanders Hammonds, Trevor Foster, a former regional head of corporate at HBOS and now with UBS, Bernard McCarthy, a former corporate tax partner of PwC, James Retallack, former Senior Partner with Edge and Ellison and now legal and compliance director of Holcim, and Robert Smith, former director of consulting for PwC’s Midlands practice.
