Wilkins Kennedy LLP has appointed four new partners, Paul Hopper, Cathy Cooper, Michael Wesley and James Leigh, with effect from 1 May. Hopper currently heads up the personal tax team in Winchester and Romsey, Cooper is an audit and accounting services provider at the Orpington office, Wesley is general practitioner of the Southampton office and Leigh is currently audit director at the Guildford office. The partner appointments come on the back of a period of significant change at the firm with the retirement of managing partner Colin Wiseman together with the retirement of senior partners, Rohit Shastri and Linda Penny, at the end of April. 

Oxford-based Critchleys has appointed five partners with effect from 1 June 2015. They include Kathryn Pocock – partner (head of academies team), who works predominantly with the charity and education sectors including over 60 schools across 24 academy trusts. Caroline Webster – partner (director of audit & assurance), Andrew Rodzynski – partner (audit), Lawrence King – partner (business recovery & insolvency), a licensed insolvency practitioner and member of the Association of Business Recovery Professionals and Katy Bruce – partner (corporate finance), who specialises in advising clients on buying and selling businesses across a variety of sectors. 

Beavis Morgan has hired Richard Durell as client partner, to boost the client audit and business advisory offering. He joins from MHA McIntyre Hudson, where he specialised in the legal, professional, property and leisure sectors. He has built up a highly developed technical expertise and is regularly consulted on complex accounting issues.

Wolters Kluwer has appointed Claire Carter as UK managing director for its tax and accounting software business. Carter joins Wolters Kluwer from Sage Software where she was managing director of the UK and Ireland accountants division. Before that, she worked for Morgan Stanley and Alliance & Leicester in senior commercial roles.

FTI Consulting has hired Andrew Jackson as a director in the governance, risk and regulation practice. Jackson has  18 years’ in-house experience within compliance and anti-money laundering (AML), most recently at KPMG where he provided expert support and advice to global financial institutions. Prior to joining KPMG, he held a variety of similar roles at Barclays, including in their private banking and wealth divisions in both Jersey and the Cayman Islands. In his new role at FTI Consulting, he will be responsible for service delivery and providing clients with a full range of financial crime risk management solutions.

Law firm, Irwin Mitchell, has expanded its business division with the appointment of commercial litigation partner Donna Goldsworthy, the ninth new partner since the start of the year. She specialises in international commercial litigation and alternative dispute resolution, and joins the firm from Cozen O’Connor where she was a partner in the international litigation and arbitration group, and prior to this at Fox Williams LLP.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has confirmed a number of appointments to the accounting regulator. These include Peter Baxter, previously chief executive officer & chief investment officer of Old Mutual Asset Managers (UK), who joins the conduct committee. Kari Hale, audit partner, Deloitte LLP, joins the audit and assurance council and James Coyle, previously group financial controller, Lloyds Banking Group, joins the monitoring committee.

Sheila Fraser CPA has been appointed as vice-chair of the IFRS Foundation Trustees, responsible for the governance and oversight of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Fraser is the former auditor general of Canada and a former partner at Ernst & Young. Fraser is serving her first three-year term as a trustee of the IFRS Foundation and chairs the nominating committee. She replaces professor Harvey Goldschmid, who passed away earlier this year, as vice-chair with immediate effect, serving alongside Ronald Arculli, who was appointed as vice-chair in December 2014. The trustees have also reappointed Sheila Fraser, Abdulrahman Al-Humaid, Wiseman Nkuhlu and Joji Okada for a second three-year term as trustees, starting 1 January 2016.