Two Baker Tilly Partners are among those from the accountancy and finance profession who are recognised in this year's Queen's birthday honours list.
Danielle Stewart, Baker Tilly's head of financial reporting, receives an OBE for services to accountancy and small business. She played a key role in writing the Financial Reporting Standard for Smaller Entities (FRSSE), and as a member of the Company Law Review group has campaigned for the rewriting the Companies Act on a 'Think Small First' basis, as well as other common sense changes such as removing the requirement for a company secretary in small companies.
More recently, Stewart helped to re-write UK GAAP, and continues her deregulation work as the accountancy profession's Red Tape Challenge Champion, making recommendations to the Cabinet Office on regulations that can assist small businesses. She advises the European Commission on the development of accounting directives as a UK representative on the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group's SME committee.
Jim Clifford, Baker Tilly's head of public sector and not for profit advisory services, also receives an OBE for services to social investment. He is an honorary visiting fellow at Cass Business School and is working on a standard protocol for corporate finance deals within the charity sector.
More recently Clifford has worked with the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies and eighteen voluntary adoption agencies across the UK to launch the first Social Impact Bond to bridge the gap between the lower rates paid on social investment to date, and the rates paid in the normal investment market. This pioneering new family-finding service for vulnerable children will use money from private and institutional investors to facilitate and support around three hundred extra adoptions a year, and is the largest example to date of social finance in the UK.
In his personal life, Clifford and his wife have successfully parented nine very troubled adopted children over the last twenty years, as well as offering support and training to parents in similar roles, and their work was highlighted in a BBC2 documentary in 2011.
The honours list also included a CBE for John Keelty, director of finance, planning and performance at HMRC, for services to improve the tax system.
