Numbers add up as accountants merge

THE Edinburgh accountancy firm McCabes is to merge with Glasgow-based French Duncan to form a business with a combined turnover of £10m.

The deal will create a firm with 20 partners, 130 fee earners and more than 150 employees.

Both firms said the merger would lead to significant expansion and the new firm, to be known as French Duncan, incorporating McCabes, will become the ninth-biggest accountancy firm in Scotland.

Jeff Meek, managing partner of McCabes, said the agreement provides the base for significant expansion of the firm in the areas of audit, taxation, corporate finance, business recovery and financial services throughout the east of Scotland and beyond.

"After many years operating as an independent firm, it was important to us that we should combine forces with like-minded people with whom we had a genuine empathy," he said. "It quickly became apparent that there is a real synergy between the two practices, with partners in both firms sharing a hands-on, client-facing approach, and that the combination of our strengths will enable us to deliver benefits to both our client bases."

Under the terms of the agreement, which will formally take effect on May 1, McCabes' three partners, Jeff Meek, Barry Laurie and Robert Clark, join French Duncan as partners.

While McCabes, founded in 1987, is a full service practice with a reputation for particular strengths in corporate finance, tax consultancy and compliance work, the amalgamated firm will reinforce its client offering by taking an additional floor at McCabes' Palmerston Place offices in Edinburgh to accommodate a new business recovery division.

For Robert Kerr, French Duncan's managing partner, the transaction represents the culmination of his firm's long-cherished ambition to open an Edinburgh office. "French Duncan is over 100 years old and until now has been seen in the Scottish business community as very much a Glasgow firm," he said. "With this amalgamation, the latest significant development in our planned growth strategy, we will realise our long-held desire to open an Edinburgh office and use it to reinforce our position as an accounting force throughout Scotland."

French Duncan partner Alan Plumtree, who already has significant client interests in Edinburgh and will act initially in a liaison capacity between the two offices, said: "This exciting amalgamation takes French Duncan's Scottish branch network to six. It also increases the coverage of our international network, Polaris International, one of the major suppliers of audit services to the European Commission, and expands the UK Polaris coverage with offices now in London, Gatwick and Birmingham as well as our offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Kirkintilloch, Dumbarton and Hamilton."