BDO Guernsey a tax, accounting and business advisory service, has become an independent firm within the global BDO organisation, following a management buyout by its board of directors.
Richard Searle, André Trebert, Justin Hallett and Stuart Phillips have purchased the business from BDO LLP in the UK making BDO Limited a wholly-owned Guernsey company.
The business has been part of the BDO international network since the early 1990s and merged with BDO LLP in the UK in 2012.
Trond-Morten Lindberg, BDO’s regional chief executive, welcomed the move to independence, saying a local Guernsey firm would fuel BDO’s international growth by “pooling knowledge”.
Richard Searle, BDO Guernsey’s managing director that it was the right time “to reinstate a management decision-making model in Guernsey, which can directly apply BDO’s future interests to local current trends and developments”.
Explaining the move he told International Adviser: “Being independent essentially re-instates a locally based decision making model that is specialised in Guernsey’s commercial, private wealth and insurance industry sectors, which is where the majority of our work comes from and where BDO perceives the next phase of our growth to be.
“The inherent BDO culture is that as colleagues across locations we work directly with one another and share our market expertise for the benefit of our clients. Consequently, for BDO’s Guernsey-based clients and those who have multi-jurisdictional interests involving Guernsey, it’s business as usual.”
BDO Guernsey provides accountancy services, audit, taxation and private planning to individuals and corporates, and employs 80 people on the island.
The BDO Group provides a similar profile of services in 162 countries with fee income of $8.1bn (€7bn, £6.2bn) as at 30 September 2017.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
