SJD Accountancy & Nixon Williams sold!

[BolshieBastard]

So you don't think you have the right as a customer to know who owns the company?

Well he is a mouthpiece for pcg oops, sorry, ipse so he is quite gullible in that respect.

Seriously, companies who deal with your private financial affairs who do not let their "customers" know of major changes that may affect your business decisions and he says what difference has it got to do with you (the customer)?

[JB3000]

Sovereign capital are looking at acquiring more contractor firms in the coming months:

Sovereign creates leading accountancy services group - Sovereign Capital

I wonder who is next.............

[PerfectStorm]

"continuing as separate companies" is acquisition speak for "knock them together and make redundancies eventually"

Should be fine from our standpoint, and hey at least it answers the old "NW or SJD" question!

If you like your accountant, make sure they get a good reference from you.

[stek]

Must admit, I'm a bit reticent, HMRC, all eggs in one basket?

[cojak]

SJD Accountancy & Nixon Williams sold!

Sovereign capital are looking at acquiring more contractor firms in the coming months:

Sovereign creates leading accountancy services group - Sovereign Capital

I wonder who is next.............

Well if they grab my accountants (not as big as SJD or NW but contractor specialists) I'm offski.

I'm not happy about this and will go to a local accountant who I've recently spoken to, I have no loyalty to Sovereign to worry about.

[Ebenezer]

You could anyway. Just not ones who have been caught.

Regardless, you don't need to be told in advance. Being told within a month or two gives you plenty of opportunity to bail before any changes actually take place.

Additionally the company being bought stops being its own entity and therefore probably/possibly CAN'T break the news off their own bat, potentially only the parent company has the authority to let them do this? Anyone?

I work in this field. PE is very secretive indeed, there's no way anybody would have been able to talk about the deal until it was announced - the PE fund wouldn't want anyone else knowing what they were up to and the selling shareholders wouldn't want to risk rocking the boat.

[bracken]

Private Equity ownership

In my experience, Private Equity ownership leads to:

• Futher acquisitions in the sector
• Consolidate of back office functions
• Offshoring everything possible
• Charging customers for every 'extra' possible
• Rising customer fees generally
• Huge drive to save costs
• Lower customer service
• Bad staff morale due to things like pay freezes, higher productivity demands
• High Returns for the Private Equity company

B

[Unix]

Should be fine from our standpoint, and hey at least it answers the old "NW or SJD" question!

Neither

[Martin at NixonWilliams]

It is not possible for this to be communicated to clients beforehand for the reasons mentioned by Ebenezer, and the decision on whether to inform our customers about the transaction lies with the investor, not Nixon Williams unfortunately.

It is business as usual here. There are no immediate plans to combine the services of Nixon Williams and SJD in any way, although best practice may be shared between the two if it improves either business.

Martin

[saptastic]

I am sure they have done plenty of due diligence and therefore is a sign of confidence in the Limited Company contractor business model.