Baker Tilly turns in a solid performance as demand grows

BAKER Tilly’s Yorkshire practice has announced that its fee income reached £20m at the end of its financial year.

The leading mid-tier firm has three offices in Yorkshire including Leeds – now Baker Tilly’s largest office outside London – employs 200 staff and 28 partners across the region.

The firm saw steady growth across a number its services during the period and said the merger with Yorkshire-based Howarth Clark Whitehill in 2008 along with its more recent decision to combine its Bradford and Keighley operations into one new office in Saltaire played a key role in helping the firm increase market share during a challenging 12 months for the economy.

Several key appointments were also made during the period including partner Steve Carter who joined to head up Baker Tilly’s professional practices group across the Northern region.

Richard King, who was appointed office managing partner in Leeds and Saltaire earlier this year following Kevin O’Connor’s appointment as regional managing partner, said: “We have had a positive start to our new financial year. We have picked up a number of significant clients during the last month and there’s certainly been an uplift in the amount of transactional work.

“This is benefitting not only our corporate finance team, but our audit and tax departments. Times do however remain challenging and like all businesses we need to manage ourselves very closely to ensure that we remain successful.”

Baker Tilly is keen to compete with the ‘Big Four’ firms of Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Andrew Mould, managing partner of the Hull office, added: “In Hull we have also had a number of new client opportunities to start the year on the back of our service offering and substantial local tax practice.

“We are now recruiting again in our audit practice, which is a first sign of a welcome recovery.”