New regional managing partner appointed at RSM

Helen Brocklebank has been appointed as RSM’s new regional managing partner (RMP) in the Midlands and East of England, a role that oversees 755 staff and 65 partners.

She will succeed Mark Taylor who has held the title for eight years and will be leaving the firm after 20 years to embark on his next venture.

TheBusinessDesk.com sat down with Brocklebank to discuss her new role, being a woman in the deals market, and her progression through the ranks from associate to partner and Birmingham’s office managing partner in October 2023.

Her focus as RMP is on driving a solutions-focused region forward after five years of major growth, with the Midlands alone being bolstered to more than 500 employees.

“At the core of the role is to shout about RSM’s breadth and show how we can support clients to deliver growth.

“It’s bringing together different viewpoints, not focusing on specialisms or what it says at the bottom of your email signature, but how we can collaborate to offer solutions”.

But at the beginning of her 17-year-long career with RSM, Brocklebank said she felt “the rug be pulled from under me” when she unexpectedly had her baby 13 weeks prematurely, leading to 18 months out of the business. Her son, now 16, is currently preparing for his GCSEs.

Whilst not entitled to any statutory payments, she says RSM looked after her both “financially and emotionally in a way that was not contractually obliged. I think it was that real human touch that has meant I have been with the business ever since.

“We didn’t necessarily have neonatal policies then, but I’m really proud that we do now and that will support someone else.

“After working at your career for so long, unexpected challenges can add pressures such as finances, your employer and long-term career prognosis. But even after taking time out, I came back into deals and I got working on some really exciting stuff again. It allowed me to keep moving forward and only now I am reflecting on how far I’ve come”.

At RSM, 50% of its M&A partners across the UK are female, with a significant number working flexibly. Brocklebank believes that whilst more women are getting into the deals market, there are still challenges in attracting the right number of women.

“We need to be really conscious about making it clear that this is a perfectly welcoming environment. There are still a lot of expectations or stereotypes which can sometimes be realistic, but if we don’t push to go past that, they’ll remain true forever.

“Certainly some of the activities around building a Women in Deals Committee and the 6% Club in the Northwest have helped make noise that incredible women are doing some incredible work”.

Operating in a subdued deals market in comparison to 2022 records, Brocklebank says activity has now just returned to pre-pandemic levels.

She said: “The fundamental drivers remain positive around the level of kind of liquidity in the market, the level of private equity and then drivers as well for entrepreneurs looking to de-risk, given how much change has occurred over the last five years.

“We had a lot of uncertainty with interest rates and while they may come down very gently, we expect them to stabilise out. I think there’s a benefit in just stability because stability can ensure planning, understanding what the medium to long-term financing implications are and making decisions around strategy. Investment decisions have been really hard to make during this period”.

Brocklebank will now step away from her role as co-head of industrials and manufacturing, with other co-lead John Bryant taking the rest of the responsibility.

On manufacturing, Brocklebank called for a coherent industrial strategy to “start to build ecosystems so that businesses can collaborate and gain traction”.

“You can look at how advanced China is on electric vehicles and that was because there was a really clear strategy. Some of the changes around innovation reliefs and the uncertainty about actually what people will come to rely on in the longer term makes it very hard for businesses to understand where to invest in forward planning”.

She takes over the RMP role on April 1 from Mark Taylor who said: “I’ve been lucky enough to have enjoyed twenty hugely rewarding years at RSM and had the pleasure of working with the extremely talented people at the firm.

“I am delighted that Helen will succeed me as regional managing partner. I’m very proud of the growth and progress we have made since 2016, and I’m confident the region will continue to go from strength to strength under Helen’s leadership.”