Grant Thornton UK

Firm Overview:

What does business need now? An adviser that offers a different experience. A better experience. One that delivers technical expertise and a service that goes beyond. Personal, proactive, and agile. That’s Grant Thornton.

The UK member firm employs over 5,000 people who operate from 27 offices, are led by 200 plus partners. We go beyond business as usual, so you can too. We make business more personal by investing in building relationships.

We're the UK member firm in a global network that employs over 68,000 people in over 140 markets. Whether you’re growing in one market or many, looking to operate more effectively, managing risk and regulation, or realising stakeholder value, we combine global scale with local insight, quality of delivery and understanding, to give you the services you need to realise your ambitions. We work at a pace that matters – yours – bringing both flexibility and rigour. We celebrate fresh thinking and diverse perspectives to bring you proactive insights and positive progress.

Our clients want a better experience and they've told us going beyond is what makes us different. We're a leader for client satisfaction and are the most recommended of the leading UK firms. 94% of clients say they would recommend Grant Thornton if asked by a colleague or peer. (Meridian West Business Buyers Barometer 2022)

Main Areas of Practice:

The UK forensic practice began in the 1980s and worked on multiple high-profile cases including, the Maxwell pension schemes, Barings, the Asian financial crisis and ‘names’ in the Lloyd’s of London insurance market. The business further accelerated following the global financial crisis of 2008 onwards which included investigations into SAAD Investment Company and Madoff International Limited (ongoing), and Stanford International Bank (ongoing). The team are increasingly focussed on crisis and risk management relating to cyber and ESG incidents.

In 2021, the UK economic consulting practice was established to complement the forensic practice. This team provides economic analysis to corporates and their legal advisors in both an advisory and litigation setting.

Grant Thornton offers a broad range of ESG services to support entities with their ESG strategy. Through our approach, we help clients deliver an effective ESG and sustainability strategy; driving costs down, improving profitability, attracting finance, improving employee attraction and retention and increasing brand attractiveness and customer loyalty as you go.

Today Grant Thornton offers a full range of crisis and risk management services comprising:

Economic risk:

The economic consulting team advises clients on how they are affected by risk, how to evaluate and account for these, and how to respond to these. The firm assists with policy development and evaluation, impact assessment, compliance and risk quantification. This might be in the context of climate risk, macro-economic risk, political risk, policy risk or regulatory risk.

For corporate clients, we advise on the impact of risk on business risk , including economic and regulatory risk and the development of mitigations and responses to regulators. The team assesses business, competition and market risks as part of due diligence on deals and models their impacts on products/service demand, price, revenue and costs. A key focus is on regulatory risks, quantification and demonstrating regulatory compliance or influencing policy development.

For public sector clients, we undertake prospective and reflective economic impact assessments and develop business cases (including strategic outline cases, outline business cases and full business cases). We specialise in advising on subsidy control risks of Government investment proposals under UK and EU subsidy control and state aid regulations.We also assists regulators (including competition and economic regulators) with developing, and understanding the impacts of, regulatory policy changes.

ESG risk:

Grant Thornton advises corporates and public sector organisations on their responsibilities with respect to ESG. Areas of prominent activity include materiality assessments, climate risk assessment, TCFD assurance, carbon neutrality and climate change litigation, supply change analysis and calculation of risk exposure. Highly ranked firms will be able to act across the whole scope of these activities, including analysing existing policies and structures for potential risk exposures, and responding to ESG crises affecting clients.

Our experience includes:

• Strategy:Supporting a global publishing company with their ESG strategy and preparation for their upcoming global sustainability reporting requirements.
• Materiality assessments: Undertaking a materiality assessment for an international marketing business, helping the leadership to define its priorities and shape its ‘voluntary’ reporting agenda against the needs of stakeholders, particularly in the areas of climate risk/carbon reduction and Diversity and Inclusion.
• Investigations:Appointed to investigate links to transatlantic slavery and conducted ESG investigations work and as part of the Independent Reviews supply chain.
• Assurance:Undertaking assurance on TCFD statements and providing advice in the context of TCFD assurance.
• Litigation:Advice and independent expert services in the context of ESG litigation with a particular focus on estimating quantum including in the context of securities litigations.

Cyber risk management:

Grant Thornton supports clients across a range of industries and sectors in assessing and managing their cyber risk posture on an ongoing basis, providing Cyber Incident Response to help resolve cyber attacks and data breaches and regulatory advocacy in support of investigations into historical breaches.

Our experience includes:

• Cyber Incident Response:Our CREST accredited Cyber Incident Response and Rebuild team has helped hundreds of clients successfully recover from cyber attacks and data breaches.
• Cyber Risk Advisory:We have advised hundreds of companies, from SMB through to FTSE100 entities, on how to measure and improve their cyber risk management strategies and ensure these are keeping up to date with the evolving cyber threat.
• Secure Digital Transformation:We were appointed by a leading international healthcare company to provide independent monitoring of the internet to identify and take action on any new vulnerabilities in their online footprint and identify insecure new digital products in development.
• Regulator Support:Grant Thornton provided the Skilled Person for the first FCA mandated S166 Cyber Security Risk Review specifically covering the cyber risk management posture and actions of a regulated company following a data breach and regulator mandated testing.
• Regulatory Advocacy:Grant Thornton were appointed by an International software provider to review the circumstances around a major data breach and their response to this and provide a report on this.

Investigations:

Grant Thornton’s investigations team draws upon decades of experience in assisting clients to discreetly address and resolve sensitive business critical matters, including allegations of fraud, greenwashing, wrongdoing, misconduct and mismanagement. We deploy lean, senior and diverse teams that are outcome-oriented and takes advantage of our broad sector expertise and global footprint to provide contextualised information and intelligence to advise senior decision-makers. Our approach embraces technology and modern investigative techniques to quickly identify and focus on the key issues. This, in turn, helps our clients make reasoned, defensible decisions faster.

Digital Forensics:

TheISO certified digital forensics team can act to ensure that evidence is preserved. Grant Thorntonhas accredited laboratories in a number of countries and regularly work across multiple jurisdictions.

Expert Witness and Quantum estimation:

Grant Thornton can be appointed as a single or joint expert witness on quantum calculation and other economic, accounting or financial issues. The firm produces expert reports and provide oral testimony before arbitral tribunals and the courts.