Cherry Professional

As an introduction can you give us a potted history on you and your company please?
I am currently the Senior Partner of the Nottingham office which means I am responsible for everything that happens inside these 4 walls, all of our people and all of our client relationships.

I have been at KPMG since 1983 which doesn't seem too long ago to me but most of the people who join us now weren't actually born in 1983! I was one of 24 people who started on the same day as a graduate starter which shows how rapidly the economy was growing then compared to the 15 or so who join each year nowadays.

I did the normal audit route and qualified as a Chartered Accountant. I was seconded to the Corporate Recovery Department and in about 1990 I moved into the Transactions Department. In 1994 I spent just over a year in London before returning to Nottingham as a Partner.

In 2001 I was approached by the firm and asked if I was interested in going to work at Boots on a secondment. The new CFO at Boots wanted somebody to work with so I spent a year on secondment working with him on special projects. It was a fantastic experience - really interesting to be on the other side of the fence.

After this, I wanted to get back into audit because I really enjoyed the ongoing client relationships. I am probably the only person I am aware of who has gone back into audit from transactions!

In 2006/2007 I was asked to go to Birmingham to head up the audit practice in the Midlands. I returned to Nottingham as Senior Partner taking over from Roger Summerton on 1st April 2010.

How has your role changed as Senior Partner?
When I was running the audit practice in the Midlands it was very much about efficiency, effectiveness and quality. I was involved in making sure that we were getting the right people on the right jobs and that the quality and the cost of delivery was right. In a sense it was more of an internally focused role.

As Senior Partner my job is to represent the firm in the market place, so it's more outward facing. This means that I often meet people that I knew when I was in Nottingham full time. It's remarkable how many faces are still around! My role is about being an ambassador for the firm; it's about making sure that we are in the market place and doing an excellent job for our clients.

It's much harder to measure success as there's no obvious measure that tells you how you're doing instantaneously, because it's not about what happens today - it's about what happens tomorrow!

How does KPMG differentiate itself from the other Big 4 firms in the market?
I think it's really about the market position you hold, and the position that you want to hold. We are very keen to demonstrate that in the East Midlands and in Nottingham in particular we are in town, we are in the market place. We are based in the city and want to be part of a successful Nottingham.

We are involved in the development of Nottingham in its widest sense. We work with very large clients but we are also in the mid-market and want to work with people who are developing their businesses. We offer all of the services that a firm of business advisors can offer from this building.
We do it very well, we pull in specialists from other offices when we need to, we are here to make sure that we deliver value for money to the mid-market as well as the bigger clients. We are very keen to make sure that we can deal with the growing businesses and the entrepreneurs in a way that gives them the advice they need.

The last couple of years have been tough for most businesses. What have been the major issues affecting KPMG and how you have addressed them?
The major issue was that virtually overnight the transactions market pretty much ground to a halt. The volume of activity in the market dropped quickly so our fee income reduced and we had to do everything we could to keep the team together.

In the last recession most of the professional firms made the mistake of letting people go. In retrospect that was a huge mistake because if you let people go on the way down, on the way back up you have to pay to get good people to join you and you are fighting against everybody else to get them back again! That's really tough because in a growth market attracting and retaining talent is a critical success factor. We were really determined not to do that and we had strategies in place to avoid it.

I think you offered a holiday break and recall reading something about it in the paper?
We offered a couple of options, under the banner of a scheme called ‘flexible futures'. People were given the opportunity to take a certain amount of time off if they wanted to and if it suited the business and quite a few people took a month or two off and went travelling during our quieter summer period. It worked really well because it kept the team together and they came back fresh and motivated but in the process made me extremely jealous because they went to some fantastic places!

You've talked a lot about the Nottingham and East Midlands focus, how do you think we are faring as a region compared to other regions across the UK?
I think we are doing ok. We have got to remember that the competition is going to get tougher and tougher. The ongoing changes around the development of the region, for example the demise of EMDA and the introduction of Local Enterprise Partnerships, will mean we have to make sure we don't drop the ball. I think we have done really, really well so far and as a result we have some businesses and sectors that are stronger than they would otherwise be.

What could we do better do you think?
We always promote ourselves better. I was at the ‘Investing in Nottingham' event the other night which was really good because it was about action and commitment. It's a sort of a business club designed to make sure Nottingham gets promoted the best way it possibly can. Nottingham is my home town, it's where my business is and I have a real interest in it doing well.

You were at the Business Awards too?
Yes, absolutely. They were tremendous fun to be involved with.

We didn't win it this time but maybe next year!
Yes, next time I hope so, I don't see any reason why not, I think you should!

A hot topic at the moment is the proposed new retirement laws. Do you have an opinion on this?
Personally I can't see why anybody should be forced to retire at any point in time. We are a very young organisation as our recruits are pretty much straight from University. That makes our average age somewhere around 25 but we have some absolutely fantastic people in the building who are a fair bit older than that and I really value their experience. I have to say if I was setting up a business today, I would really look towards mature people as being the core of my employees. I don't see any reason why anybody should be made to retire on age grounds alone, if you can still do the job and somebody still wants to employ you then why not carry on if you want to?

Outside of work what makes you tick as a person?
I play golf and have recently had a decent round so am very happy with the game at the moment after 3 months of complete depression! I really enjoy reading and going to the movies and socialising with friends. I like to watch most sports, in particular rugby. I was at the cricket on Friday - I'm not a huge cricket fan but it was a good day out with lots of action.

Anything else you would like to say about yourself or the firm?
The most commonly asked question I get when I talk to business people is whether it's getting better out there. I actually don't know whether it's getting any better, it's hard to tell. I'm pretty sure it's not getting any worse and I think going back to the earlier conversation that it's really important to keep the team together. We are determined to grow and there are opportunities out there. We have deliberately turned our minds towards growth a little bit earlier in the cycle than we did after the last downturn. I would rather be a bit early than a bit late and that's an active decision we have made. Confidence I think counts for a lot, and we are pretty confident.