The past few years have been a time of great change in the regulated professions and the coming years look to be no less turbulent. A legal profession still reeling from the rapid deflation of the Irish property bubble will soon have to come to terms with significant regulatory change while the professional indemnity insurance market is still uncertain following the collapse of the Solicitors Mutual Defence Fund (SMDF) in 2011.
For doctors and medical professionals the continuing Government cutbacks will continue to cause uncertainty but the continued rollout of primary care centres and the scope to increase efficiencies in the way that medical services are delivered will present opportunities. Many medical professionals will however have to make greater use of IT systems and ancillary staff to realise those efficiencies and that will present pitfalls for those who do so without experienced advisors on board.
Meanwhile, accountants would appear to be in something of a relative bright spot having taken aggressive steps in relation to the reorganisation of their businesses in 2008/2009 and the recent months have seen significant job announcements from Deloitte, PwC and others. However it remains a fact that audit clients are continuing to seek greater value as businesses everywhere become more cost and value focused while muted transactional activity has an effect on accountants’ transactional and tax practices. Insolvency practitioners of course remain in particularly high demand but having emerged from a decade of lean times in which major corporate insolvencies were relatively few and far between the need for these practitioners to succeed in the current environment cannot be overstated.
Representative engagements on which Peppe Santoro has been involved in relation to professional services include:
- negotiation support in relation to the resolution of a dispute in an existing successful law firm;
- advising on the admission of new partners to an existing professional services firm;
- advising various accountancy practices on company law and compliance issues; and
- advising on corporate aspects of several schemes designed by accountants to deliver commercial and tax efficiencies for clients.