Baker Tilly’s Yorkshire practice has announced that fee income reached £20m for the year to 31 March 2010.
The leading mid-tier firm has three offices in Yorkshire, including Leeds which is now Baker Tilly’s largest office outside London, and employs 200 staff and 28 partners across the region.
The firm saw steady growth across a number of service lines during the period and believes the merger with Howarth Clark Whitehill (Yorkshire) 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, commented:
“Despite what was another difficult 12 months for the regional business community, we are continuing to reap the benefits of the merger with Howarth Clark Whitehill (Yorkshire) along with a number of office relocations.
“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. Our clients have remained very loyal to us and we really appreciate their continued support.”
Andrew Mould, managing partner of the Hull office, added to Richard King’s comments by saying:
“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.”