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Corporate Finance and Deal Advisory
We offer a dedicated team of experienced individuals with a focus on successfully executing transactions for corporates and financial institutions. We offer an integrated approach, with our corporate finance specialists working seamlessly with tax and other specialists to ensure that every angle is covered.
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Digital Risk
Grant Thornton offers solutions to the digital risk issues you are sure to face. Our skilled and experienced security team can helping by advising and consulting, giving you peace of mind, clear value for money and an enhanced ability to react to attacks.
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Technology Consulting
Motivating and assisting our clients to pursue, maintain and secure the benefits of digital solutions is at the core of our Digital Transformation teams' agenda and goals. We work with business leaders to deliver efficient digital strategies and operating models that provide new or enhanced capabilities.
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Economic Advisory
Our all-island Economics Advisory team combines expertise in economics and business with a wealth of experience across the public and private sectors.
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Forensic Accounting
We have a different way of doing business by delivering real insight through a combination of technical rigour, commercial experience and intuitive judgment. We take pride in delivering responsive and tailored solutions to all our clients, capitalising on the wealth of experience housed within our Belfast and wider Forensics team
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People and Change Consulting
The Grant Thornton People & Change Consulting practice works with clients on these issues as well as on all aspects of how they attract, retain, engage develop, deploy and lead their people.
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Restructuring
We work with a wide variety of clients and stakeholders such as high street banks, private equity funds, directors, government agencies and creditors to implement solutions which provide the best possible outcomes.
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Corporate and International Tax
Northern Ireland businesses face further challenges as they operate in the only part of the UK that has a land border with a country offering a lower tax rate.
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Employer Solutions
Our team specialises in remuneration and incentive planning and works closely with employers, shareholders and employees to ensure that business strategies are aligned and goals achieved in the most tax efficient, cost-effective manner.
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Entrepreneur and Private Client Taxes
Our team of experienced advisors are on hand to guide you through any decision or transaction ranging from the establishment of new business ventures, to realising value on exit, to succession planning and providing for loved ones.
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Global Mobility Services
Grant Thornton Ireland offer a different approach to managing global mobility. We have brought together specialists from our tax, global payroll, people and change and financial accounting teams across Ireland and Northern Ireland, while drawing on the knowledge and insights of our global network of over 143 offices of mobility professionals to provide you with a holistic approach to managing global mobility.
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Outsourced Payroll
Our outsourced service provides valued service to over 150 separate PAYE schemes. These ranging from 1 to 1000 employees, working for micro, SME and global employers. The service is supported by the integrated network of tax and global mobility teams and the wider Grant Thornton network delivering a seamless service. Experienced staff deliver a personal service built around your business needs.
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Tax Disputes and Investigations
Our Tax Disputes and Investigation team is made up of tax experts and former HMRC investigators who have years of experience in dealing with a variety of tax investigations. Our expertise and insight can guide you through all interactions, keeping your cost at a minimum while allowing you to continue with the day to day running of your business.
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VAT and Indirect Taxes
At Grant Thornton (NI) LLP, our team helps Northern Ireland businesses manage their UK and global indirect tax risks which, as transactional taxes, can quickly become big liabilities.
Received wisdom states that Northern Ireland has low levels of entrepreneurship but if the past three years of Brexit arguments have taught me anything, it is that most things stated as robust fact require a second look. And so it is with our Entrepreneurship story. Yes, we have traditionally been poor at starting new business, but are we still?
Latest data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report for Northern Ireland show that over the past 15 years, the proportion of Northern Ireland’s population describing themselves as “early stage entrepreneurs” (those in the process of starting a business or running one for less than 3.5 years) has grown by 75%, to 6.5% of the working-age population. Although this rate still lags behind the UK rate as a whole (8.7%), it is an impressive improvement.
In seeking to understand why people here are motivated to become entrepreneurs, the findings from the GEM report suggest that opportunity (pull factors) are far outweighing necessity (push factors such as losing a job). That finding would be consistent with the strength of the labour market in recent years, which has added tens of thousands of jobs since the depths of the recession.
The age profiles of people engaged in entrepreneurial activity also throws up some interesting insight. The GEM report looks at rates for 18-29 year olds and 30-64 year olds. At a Northern Ireland level there is little difference in the Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA, the primary measure of entrepreneurship in the GEM report) of two age groups. The most notable gaps by age are in Lisburn and Castlereagh, and Antrim and Newtownabbey, where the TEA rate of 30-64 year olds is under half that of 18-29 year olds. Entrepreneurship matters more than ever across our Northern Ireland. As Brexit uncertainty places a cloud over future prospects for inward investment, and as about 80% of FDI projects go to Belfast anyway, entrepreneurship is vital to local wealth building and delivering on economic growth ambitions.
This makes good business support all the more crucial. At the last count, there are around 2,000 business support programmes which are being delivered by hundreds of providers. Much of this support is one off transactional type support and doesn’t appear to be making any significant impact on business performance. There is a growing case being made that more effective support will be delivered by moving away from this transactional approach and moving to a relational approach with trusted advisors and mentors that can guide business growth and act as a critical friend.
So, does the received wisdom still hold? Are we still lagging behind on entrepreneurship? Maybe we are, but there has been a vast improvement.