Finance Monthly April 2019 Edition

69 www.finance-monthly.com APPOINTMENTS Johnston Carmichael Expands Financial Services Expertise with Partner Hire Johnston Carmichael, Scotland’s largest independent firm of CharteredAccountants and Business Advisers, has strengthened its financial services advisory team with the appointment of a key strategic hire. Ewen Fleming joins as Partner following a long and successful career in financial services covering retail banking, wealth management and business consulting. He brings with him significant experience in strategy and planning; implementing large scale change; credit risk; operations; sales distribution; and management consulting. His appointment is part of an ambitious plan to expand Johnston Carmichael’s capability in the financial services industry. Prior to joining Johnston Carmichael, Ewen was a Partner at Grant Thornton and leader of the firm’s Financial Services practice. He began his career at Royal Bank of Scotland where he occupied senior roles in risk, strategy, and distribution & operations for the bank’s retail, SME and wealth divisions. From there, he moved to Santander UK where he established its Premium Banking business before becoming a highly respected business consultant to the financial services sector. In his new role, Ewen will help to build on the existing expertise within Johnston Carmichael’s financial services team which led the high-profile, independent review of ten proposed Royal Bank of Scotland branch closures last year. The firm also has strong expertise working with a wide range of organisations across the financial spectrum providing services ranging from statutory/regulatory audits and controls assurance reporting, to regulatory capital reviews and the production of Key Information Documents and MiFID II reporting models. The firm has also invested in financial modelling and data analytics expertise in recent years. BTG Advisory, a division of Begbies Traynor Group plc, has appointed experienced funding experts David Smithies, Stephen Couldwell and Andy Chaffer to its corporate solutions team. David, Stephen and Andy will work with banks and professionals to help businesses across the North to access unsecured lending, in partnership with European credit specialist Caple. The move strengthens BTG Advisory’s offering of tailored funding solutions. David has over 35 years’ corporate and commercial banking experience as a banking relationship director with NatWest, working with a portfolio of businesses across a range of industries. Stephen also has an extensive relationship and bank lending experience having worked for RBS for more than 30 years. He was latterly involved in providing a customer perspective to regulatory change across the industry. Andy also has a strong track record in the financial sector having held a number of roles including as a business development manager for funders and as an investment manager. He also spent more than five years as an entrepreneur coach for MBA students at Leeds University Business School. The trio will be working with banks, businesses and other intermediaries to facilitate access to long-term, fully unsecured loans of £0.5m - £5.0m and terms of five to eight years. Access to the loans is enabled by BTG Advisory’s membership of Caple’s Partner Network. The team will undertake due diligence, source and run deals, and complete credit applications on behalf of the business. Trio of Funding Specialists Joins the BTG Advisory Team KPMG UK announces two appointments and details of its new legal advisory business to address the rapidly changing requirements of in-house lawyers. The new service, Legal Operations & Transformation Services (LOTS), will be headed up by Director Nicola Brooks, who joins from Travers Smith where she was operations director. During her time at Travers, Nicola was responsible for driving quality, efficiency and innovation to Legal Service Delivery. James Thomas joins Nicola as the new Head of Legal Technology & Innovation, having been the Global Lead of Legal Technology at KPMG International since 2016, and will help to support the LOTS proposition as part of his role. The LOTS offering will also include a team of transformation specialists from KPMG Boxwood, working under Neill Whitaker and Simon McCall to help companies and their General Counsel re-imagine how legal services are delivered to the business. This will help them to meet the demands of the modern legal market including evolving regulation, the digital economy and increased business disruption. Nick Roome, Partner and UK Head of Legal Services at KPMG, said: “The demands on today’s in-house legal teams are increasingly changing which is putting more pressure on budgets and resources. That’s why we are excited to launch LOTS to help in-house legal functions adapt and become the legal teams of the future. “I’m also thrilled to welcome Nicola and James to the team. They will significantly strengthen our capability in this area, drawing together multi-disciplinary capabilities from KPMG and the wider market to help in-house legal teams evolve in an industry which is facing unprecedented levels of change.” Nicola Brooks, Director and new UK Head of LOTS at KPMG, said: “I am delighted to join KPMG to launch LOTS in the UK. Being part of the KPMG network enables us to draw together a first-class multi- disciplinary team to help our clients transform the way they deliver legal services across their organisations. “We want to help them develop solutions that maximise cost efficiencies, optimise operations and continue to position them as a strategic business facilitator and manager of legal risk. Much of this will be enabled by the right people strategy, good process and underpinned by technology.” KPMG UK joins KPMG Australia, Germany and Switzerland in offering LOTS to clients to bring global and cross-border insight. In particular, it will leverage KPMG’s technology capabilities, including its strategic partnerships with third-party technology providers to help evolve in-house legal functions. Nick Roome added: “Being part of a global professional services network means that we are ideally placed to draw on our firm’s breadth of knowledge and business insight, combined with high- quality legal expertise to provide a better depth of support for clients and a broader range of experiences for our people.” KPMG UK Announces Appointments for New Legal Consultation Service