Hamayou Akbar (Aki) Hussain is to join the Hiscox Group as group chief financial officer (CFO) from his current positon as CFO of Prudential UK & Europe, where he has spent seven years. A chartered accountant who trained with KPMG, Hussain has held a number of senior roles in the financial services, telecoms and media sectors. He was finance director for the consumer bank division at Lloyds Banking Group until 2009, and before that he was finance director for the consumer division of NTL (now Virgin Media) until 2006.

Yorkshire-based accountancy firm Garbutt + Elliott has appointed two of its tax specialists to head up the personal tax and business tax specialisms. Richard Whitelock will become head of private clients' tax. He has worked at the firm for over 18 years, and has been a chartered tax adviser for 16 years.  Rob Durrant-Walker will be head of business tax.  He has over 24 years' tax experience and contributes to CIOT’s technical committee work.

Grant Thornton UK LLP has promoted Simon Woodcock and Anthony Platt to directors in its corporate finance advisory team. Woodcock joined the firm in 2008 and is part of Grant Thornton's business support services industry group. Platt has been with the team for over three years and specialises in advising clients in the technology, media and telecoms industry.

Law firm Pinsent Masons has hired its first chief operating officer (COO), Alastair Mitchell, a chartered accountant who has worked in professional services for over 30 years.  The bulk of his career to date has been with Linklaters for whom he worked between 1999 to 2012, and spent five years serving as the firm's UK COO. Mitchell joins from Holman Fenwick Willam (HFW) which he joined in 2012 as COO.

Price Bailey has promoted three staff, Andrew Booth, Rob Smith and Steve McGregor, to the level of director. Booth joined the firm in 1984 and was made senior manager in 2010, becoming the first non-partner responsible individual (RI) for audits. Smith has over ten years' corporate finance experience and joined the firm from Baker Tilly in 2012. McGregor joined the firm as an investment manager in the private client team in in 2010 from Barclays Wealth.

RSM has appointed Melanie Gilmour as a manager in the corporate finance team based in Aberdeen. She joins from Simmons & Company where she was a senior analyst, following almost four years’ working at KMPG where she qualified as a chartered accountant, and brings extensive transactional experience across a range of sectors.

South West-based firm Milsted Langdon has hired Ryan Walters as general practice manager in the Yeovil office. He is an ACCA fellow and a member of AAT.

Crowdfunding platform Property Partner has recruited a new CFO, Warren Bath, the former mergers & acquisitions director at Sky plc. Bath has also held senior positions at Morgan Stanley, Virgin Mobile UK and Vodafone Australia.