‘It’s not about replicating what we had before’

Mazars has a new office managing partner in Leeds – Chlöe Ellis.

On her first day back at work in 2022 she sat down with TheBusinessDesk.com to talk about the challenges of the last couple of years and what the future has in store.

The conversation starts with a candid comment, that perhaps moving in the midst of a pandemic went against her normal risk averse accountant personality.

“I joined Mazars about a month before lockdown, and I came in with the view that I’d be out there and winning businesses,” she said.

“Now if you’d told me before I joined that yes, I would be doing that, but from the kitchen table as a result of lockdown I’m not sure I would have moved.”

However, Ellis, who has over 20 years experience in providing advice to owner-managed businesses and large corporate group with complex international tax issues, explained it has in fact been a fantastic move.

She said despite lockdown the corporate finance area of the business has been as busy as ever, with both PE and overseas investors having money to invest and actively looking for opportunities.

Ellis noted that the business has also seen a growth in clients approaching it and “looking to move away from the Big Four” as a result of the world changing. She added that Mazars has “taken on some fantastic clients in the past 12 to 18 months, and that movement hasn’t finished.”

Looking ahead to 2022, as well as the continued growth, the new office managing partner noted she wants to focus on both sustainability and people.

She said: “We’ve seen some really good people join Mazars in the last 18 months, and we’ve got further recruits which will come to fruition in the next few months and I think if we get the people right then everything else falls into place.

“So continuing to attract good people and retaining the talent we have is going to be a focus for me. Sustainability is something I really want to focus on – the way we operate and the impact we have on the environment and everything. It’s perhaps not something that was on the agenda five to 10 years ago but we need to do that.”

Ellis highlighted that it’s important for her and other senior professionals to continue to reassess what the next generation is looking for.

“I think as a profession we need to think about how we get the best out of people if – and I think they are – the changes to working practices are here to stay.

“And some of that is actually trying to understand what a 20-year-old is looking for and realising – although I may sometimes feel I’ve just left university – it’s actually a very different world now. It’s not about replicating the way I trained but looking at what works for the next generation.”

She emphasised it’s important we don’t think about replicating what’s gone before when we talk about the future, not only in training but also for the wider economy.

“It’s interesting people use the word ‘recover’ and I think they’re absolutely right to some extent. But by the same token during the pandemic we’ve seen some phenomenal businesses who have just shown the absolute true meaning of entrepreneur.

“They’ve had a business that could have fallen on its knees overnight and those entrepreneurial owners have reconfigured things, entered new markets and have actually had some amazing success.

“So it’s not about trying to replicate what we had. The world has changed we’re never going back to five days a week in the office and a business which is only sustainable on that basis is not going to survive.

“But is saying Yorkshire needs to recover right? I think there are some amazing businesses in the county which have done phenomenally well in Covid and shown that Yorkshire spirit of actually getting our heads down, working hard getting on and adapting to do something else.”

As the conversation comes to a close, Ellis explains that in the next one to two years she believes the Mazars brand will continue to grow and will continue to attract talent and clients.

She said this progress all builds on the company’s office move to Wellington Place in 2018, which she notes “put us on a level playing field with the Big Four and the other mid tier firms.”