Kreston Reeves, has expanded the firm’s private client tax team with the appointment of Stephen Metcalf as senior manager. He has worked in private client tax for more than 17 years, most recently at Day Smith Hunter.

EY is expanding its Scottish operation with the appointment of Paul Copland as audit partner in its Edinburgh office. Previously with Deloitte, he is the 12th new partner in Scotland in 2015 and his appointment comes just one month after EY announced the appointment of 10 new internal partner promotions. This brings the total number of EY partners in Scotland to 33. During his 17-year career, Copland has worked with major listed and privately owned businesses in Scotland and overseas, with experience across sectors including technology, media and telecommunications (TMT), transportation, oil and gas, and manufacturing.

Steve Clarke, managing partner of James Cowper Kreston, has been re-elected to the board of Kreston International’s global accountancy network as a global rather than regional member. Clarke said: ‘There are just two places on its 12-strong board that are elected by its members on a global rather than regional basis.  It is a real privilege to be asked to represent member firms for a second term.’ The second international board member is Elena Ramirez, a partner from Spanish accountancy firm Iberaudit Kreston.

Hurst has promoted Rachel Jackson and Richard Smethurst to newly-created positions of assistant manager. Both joined the accountancy firm as graduate trainees in 2003 and 2007 respectively. Jackson works in the tax department while Smethurst is a member of the business services team. The firm also plans to expand its graduate intake to six this year, up from the usual four.

PKF Cooper Parry has appointed Bhupesh Patel as manager in the specialist pensions audit team. He has more than 15 years’ experience in the preparation and audit of pension scheme financial statements, in various roles at Deloitte, Tenon and Aviva. He will be based in the Midlands.

PwC has appointed two data analytics directors, Scott Samme and Tayyaba Arif to the financial services risk and regulation team, joining the leadership team of PwC’s financial services advanced risk and compliance analytics (ARCA) practice. Samme joins from EY where he was a leader in the compliance IT advisory practice. He specialises is in the detection and prevention of financial crime and compliance. Arif has over 12 years’ experience in helping organisations develop their data vision and strategy as well as managing and delivering complex multi-site data programmes, most recently at Accenture where she led data management and governance at Accenture Digital.

Finance provider, Alternative Bridging, has appointed Sahail Akram as business development manager to cover the Midlands and North of England. In previous roles he gained experience of developing relationships with introducers at the State Bank of India and United National Bank working closely with mortgage packagers, brokers’ IFAs and networks as well as accountants and solicitors. His expertise is in buy-to-let and commercial mortgages.

E-invoicing and purchase-to-pay solutions provider Basware has named Amabel Grant as UK managing director to focus on driving the uptake of e-invoicing in the UK, particularly across the public sector. The move follows the acquisition of eProcurement software solution provider Procserve. Prior to joining Procserve in 2008, she was international vice president of Exostar, a US-based aerospace & defence online marketplace.

Pitmans Trustees (PTL) has hired Matt Pridding as client manager at the Leeds office of nationwide independent trustees’ provider. He joins PTL after seven years at Capita and Mercer in various roles handling pension scheme windups. He has also worked in administration and client management.

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