ABERDEEN accountancy firm Hall Morrice is launching a corporate finance division, declaring that this is “absolutely the right time” to invest in the city.
Aberdeen has suffered economically since the oil price began to fall in June 2014. But with oil stabilising and businesses beginning to invest in Aberdeen again, Hall Morrice said there was a requirement to service corporate entities and private equity houses from a diligence capacity.
Hall Morrice has made two key appointments to lead the new team, adding to its 50 employees.
Tom Faichnie has been named managing director of Hall Morrice Corporate Finance, while Melanie Gilmour becomes manager of the division.
Both arrive from RSM Aberdeen, where they specialised on deals activity within the energy sector. At Hall Morrice they will largely focus on working with corporate entities and private equity houses seeking to invest in oilfield services companies.
Mr Faichnie said: “We have been seeing the green shoots of recovery for the region since the middle of last year and this is absolutely the right time to get ahead of the game and invest in Aberdeen.
“The decline in trading results seen during the period of low oil price appears to have stabilised and we can see that order books are now tipping back in the right direction. As companies start to build up again, they will need working capital to deliver and grow their order books and many will require funding.”
Mr Faichnie said he also anticipated a number of exits in the next six months, particularly from smaller players.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here