Bishop Fleming has appointed Graham Charlton as tax partner and head of the private equity tax team, growing the service offering across the whole firm. He has over 19 years of experience in accountancy, advising numerous private equity-backed businesses throughout their lifecycle and will focus on providing management advisory services for private equity-backed clients. Charlton was previously a tax director at PwC.

Forvis Mazars has promoted Lisa Pennington to accounting and outsourcing partner to lead the firm’s UK healthcare and life sciences team, based in the Manchester office. Since joining the firm in 2023 as a director, Pennington has led on supporting and developing year-end compliance and advisory services for a range of medical clients, including GP practices, federations, primary care networks and general practitioners, as well as advising individuals on their business strategies.

Deloitte has appointed Suresh Kanwar as managing partner for UK financial services and he also joins the executive team. He has over 25 years of experience and specialises in delivering large scale business and technological change for financial services clients across the globe. Previously, he was leader of Deloitte UK’s banking and capital markets team. Kanwar started his career at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in 1998, becoming a managing director in Accenture’s capital markets business before joining Deloitte as a partner in 2016.

Shaw Gibbs has appointed Chris Wharton as outsourcing partner. With 20 years of experience working with entrepreneurial businesses, he specialises in systems selection and transformation within client’s financial functions. Wharton has a strong practice background in sectors such as real estate, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, and legal. He joins the firm from Cooper Parry (previously Haines Watts) Esher, where he served as an associate partner. He will be located in the Farnham office of Shaw Gibbs.

Henderson Loggie has appointed Stephen Dodds as a tax director. A chartered accountant and CTA with 20 years of experience, he specialises in advising owner-managed businesses on tax efficient structuring and incentivising management teams. He joins the firm from Deloitte where he was an associate director, tax. Originally, Dobbs trained as a tax lawyer at Maclay Murray and Spens, now part of Dentons.

Vibrant Accountancy has promoted Amie Fellows to the position of associate director, while Hana Chatwin joins the Derbyshire firm also as an associate director, and Dawn Ford comes on board as a client manager. In her new role, Fellows will oversee the Vibrant team and work on growth strategy as well as looking after clients. Accountant Chatwin joins from Cooper Parry, and will focus on supporting a range of businesses, including SME and start-up clients, to scale and grow.

FRP has appointed Neil Withington as director in its Leeds team to a newly created role focused on corporate simplification. In the new role, he will work with clients and teams across the firm’s national network on pre-elimination phases of work. Withington is a qualified accountant with 23 years’ experience and spent 13 years in the corporate simplification team at Deloitte, which included a secondment to HSBC, advising on the removal of over 400 entities from its global group structure, and dissolution planning for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Translink Corporate Finance, part of BHP Chartered Accountants, has appointed Alex Archer and Lauren Woodward as corporate finance executives, based at the Leeds and Sheffield offices, where they will focus on delivery of cross-border deals. Archer has five years’ experience and joins from Armstrong Watson where he was an audit and assurance senior. Woodward moves across to Translink after spending four years in the audit department at BHP, most recently as an assistant manager, having joined the firm as an apprentice.

The Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) has appointed Richard Collins OBE and Julie Swan as independent chairs, expanding the governance team. Collins becomes chair of the Professional Regulation And Standards Compliance Board (PRSC). He has a background in regulatory and professional body leadership, and was an executive director at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and chief executive of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Swan is named chair of the Awarding Organisation Compliance Board (AOC) and brings a wealth of experience in legal education, qualifications and assessment. She is director of education and training at the SRA, and was previously deputy chief regulator at Ofqual.

ICAEW has appointed Sandra Mundy to its regulatory board as a non-lay for a three-year term. Mundy is a chartered accountant and licensed insolvency practitioner who focuses on restructuring and insolvency. A partner at James Cowper Kreston since 2009, Mundy leads the firm’s turnaround restructuring and insolvency team and is a member of its strategy committee. Previously, she was a member of ICAEW’s restructuring and insolvency advisory group and more recently a member of the appeals committee from 2018 to 2024.