eFinancialCareers

The Big Four accountancy firms are looking to bolster their corporate finance teams in the GCC in anticipation of a raft of M&A business in the region.

Deloitte this week announced that it would be moving six partners from the UK to the Middle East with an eye to expanding the team. It will be offering M&A advisory and support services, IPO advisory, and Islamic finance advice, among other things.

Chris Ward, global head of corporate finance advisory at Deloitte, says: “We have ambitious plans to grow the new business, both in size and in the range of services offered. We predict the M&A market in the Middle East will grow at a staggering rate in the next few years; we intend to be at the vanguard of this development.”

And Deloitte will be fending off competition from its Big Four rivals. Ernst & Young’s corporate finance division, for example, has licences in Bahrain, Dubai, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and has plans to expand into Oman, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

Meanwhile KPMG is looking to up its corporate finance team in Qatar and Bahrain, and is recruiting for senior associates and managers to cover financial services (conventional and Islamic), real estate, infrastructure and telecoms M&A deals.

Rory Adamson, director of executive search firm Azrek, says that the Big Four are bolstering their corporate finance teams to deal both with increased business and the fact that investment banks generally poach their talent.

“The accountancy firms will take on people without regional experience, whereas investment banks generally value this,” he explains. “Therefore, if somebody has worked within a Big Four corporate finance transactions department for a couple of years, they’re very attractive to the banks.”

Of course, the i-banks offer better money. But Adamson says that a manager can generally earn $100k-$150k within a Big Four firm, but bonuses only come in at around 10-15%.