Financial & business advisory services
From our extensive experience in advising professional practices we are familiar with most issues that arise. For example, we are currently assisting businesses realise value through external investment and IPOs.
We also maintain strong contacts with appropriate organisations and individuals to ensure that we can provide the most up to date information.
Our financial & business advisory services
We provide advice on a range of financial and business areas for professional practices, including:
Financial health checks & benchmarking
We are frequently asked to draw upon our experience within this sector and to report to partners on financial management issues affecting their business.
This may take the form of
- a bespoke profitability review
- consideration of a firm's capital or gearing ratio
- a more general benchmarking exercise
LLP conversion
Our professional practices team was actively involved with the discussions and consultation process in bringing the LLP structure onto the statute books.
Our experience and knowledge of the LLP conversion process
- undertaken over 40 instructions for firms converting to LLP status
- clients include national and provincial chartered surveyors, law firms, actuaries and architects
The team acted as the intermediary between the consultees and the Department of Trade and Industry, Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise now jointly HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). This enabled us to have first hand knowledge of the issues discussed and we jointly drafted with the Inland Revenue their December 2000 Tax Bulletin and with Customs & Excise their Business Brief dealing with the practical issues arising on the conversion from a partnership to an LLP.
Remuneration
We have wide experience of both the aspiration and motivation issues for individuals in professional practices and the management issues for firms, as well as the tax and National Insurance consequences.
We regularly advise firms on the merits of lockstep, performance related pay, fixed shares and other ways of rewarding partners. We find that there is no specific formula applicable to all firms but rather such systems need to be tailored to take account of the firm's culture and ethos.
Refinancing
The decision to acquire an asset under a lease agreement or outright purchase is one which firms often face. We regularly advise our professional practices on such issues including refinancing/restructuring loans.
A cross-departmental team from Smith & Williamson successfully concluded a major time critical project to refinance £30 million of partnership and partners' borrowings. We created a tax efficient structure and addressed such key issues as future profit sharing, the imbalance of borrowings and ownership in the firm, pension rights and consideration of future profitability and cash flows in determining the level of debt and repayment terms. A new partnership agreement was subsequently prepared with our assistance.
Contact us
For more information contact us.
