-
Business Risk Services
Our Business Risk Services team deliver practical and pragmatic solutions that support clients in growing and protecting the inherent value of their businesses.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
'Placemaking' is key to future regeneration
21 Aug 2019A regular feature in the business news headlines over the last number of years has been the launch of a range of development and regeneration projects across Northern Ireland, concentrated mainly in Belfast. Projects of various scale including the Ulster University Belfast Campus development; Waterside at Sirocco works; and the controversial Tribeca are all seeking to add to the significant investment which has been made in the city over the last 20 years. These investments have seen Belfast emerge as a 21st century city, which is attractive to visitors, investors and talent, with the concept of ‘placemaking’ underpinning this emergence.
Placemaking is defined as the practice of creating or enhancing a community’s assets to improve its overall attractiveness and liveability. It has evolved from being used by planners to being much more at the core of economic development of cities and towns. Creating places where workers, entrepreneurs, and businesses want to locate, invest, and expand is vital to staying competitive in the 21st century global economy.
A core element of placemaking is capitalising on existing strengths. Ensuring the investment in place aligns with the character of the location and the local economy is fundamental to its long-term success. The most successful developments build on the local assets, complement the local industrial structure, and draw from the local skills base. They have minimal displacement impacts, and are enablers for further investment.
In Belfast today, we have modern office accommodation which sits alongside the docks constructed during the Napoleonic wars. Law firms and technology companies now buffer a working harbour, and a modern service sector integrates with a place whose development was initially for a primarily maritime purpose. This physical regeneration and investment in office stock has enabled a shift towards a more knowledge and service based economy. Belfast’s post troubles regeneration has, in the main, successfully built on its heritage, giving the city an authentic and unique quality of life offer.
With our local councils now benefiting from a devolved planning authority, coupled with additional economic development powers, they have an enhanced role in shaping our cities and towns, and the places in them. Having supported a range of public and private sector clients in establishing the viability of their projects and developing the economic case for their proposals, Grant Thornton’s Economic Advisory team has seen councils use these powers first-hand. Isolated impacts and the shifting of economic activity will no longer cut it; local councils are looking for the placemaking elements of proposals, with a focus on how projects fit with and enhance the socio-economic baseline both locally and regionally.
With further developments in the pipeline, and in Belfast in particular, ambitious targets around population and job growth requiring densification, this focus on placemaking is likely to be even sharper going forward.