Supply Chain, Staffing And Inflation Are Key Concerns
Michael Nolan, partner at the Grant Thornton office in Cork, says the firm has gone from strength to strength over the past year, with new services lines now being run out of Cork, and all other services lines seeing expansion in both client engagements and employee headcount.
“Financial services related engagements, both in the accounting and IT services areas, are seeing significant growth, with client requests across technical change, AML remediation and fund accounting all being in significant demand,” Nolan explains.
Grant Thornton’s headcount in Cork has expanded across all service lines, with c.180 employees now based out of Cork. According to Nolan: “With the pandemic we have found that work is no longer locationspecific, which has helped significantly in our ability to recruit high-calibre candidates from outside the region. Recruitment is challenging, though it simply requires more effort than previously.
“The world has become smaller, which has opened up markets to professional firms that we could previously not service, as clients would have had the view that our staff had to be on site or located close to where they operated.”
Among clients, issues of concern centre on supply chain, inflation, staffing and housing. “Not all these issues are having an impact on every business but none are immune to all of them,” says Nolan.