Grant Thornton elects Malcolm Gomersall as new UK chief

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Grant Thornton has appointed chief operating officer Malcolm Gomersall as its new UK boss following the surprise departure of David Dunckley from the role earlier this month.

Partners elected Gomersall to lead the mid-tier accounting firm for an initial three-year term subject to regulatory approval, Grant Thornton said.

It comes after Dunckley, who ran the firm since 2018, resigned despite securing an extension in 2022 to remain in the job until the end of 2026. The 50-year-old said he decided over Christmas that it “was time to take a break” without providing any further details as to why he was quitting almost three years early.

Gomersall, who had taken over the day-to-day running of the firm in recent weeks, joined Grant Thornton’s leadership team in 2018 as head of people and client experience before being promoted to chief operating officer in 2019.

During his tenure in charge of Grant Thornton, Dunckley moved the firm away from the “public interest entity” audit market in order to reduce its exposure to high-risk clients. PIEs include listed companies, credit institutions and insurers. As a result, Grant Thornton was last year demoted from the UK regulator’s top tier of audit supervision.

Gomersall will focus on deciding whether the firm should now take on a greater number of PIE audits after the Financial Reporting Council said last year that its audit quality had improved.

The firm, which employs around 5,000 staff in the UK, was hit with a string of regulatory penalties by the Financial Reporting Council in recent years for shortcomings in its audit work.

Since 2021, it has been fined more than £4mn after the industry watchdog uncovered failings in its audits of collapsed café chain Patisserie Valerie, retailer Sports Direct and outsourcer Interserve.

In 2022, the administrators of Patisserie Valerie also settled a £200mn lawsuit with the firm that alleged negligence in its audits of the café chain.

In its latest accounts for 2022, the UK firm posted revenues of £610mn, a 12 per cent increase on the previous year. Average partner pay fell 5 per cent to £579,000.

Imogen Joss, chair of Grant Thornton’s partnership governance board, said the firm’s leadership team successfully steered it through some of the “biggest macroeconomic and cultural changes of our time, whilst maintaining a focus on quality of work and the wellbeing of our people”.

She added: “The partnership and I are confident that Malcolm will continue this journey and take the firm to even greater heights.”

Gomersall said: “I am immensely proud of the progress our firm has made over the past few years and I look forward to continuing this momentum in the years to come.”