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Seminars stimulate debate

Our seminar programme for 2011 has already attracted almost 50 delegates and triggered debate on a variety of issues, as Paul Winder reports.

The programme began on 7 April, with our Tax Partners and Managers session. As always with this event, there was lively discussion, with topics including current HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) activity.

Among the delegates was Simon Braidley, Seymour Taylor’s new senior tax manager. Simon is current
president of the Association of Taxation Technicians and was able to provide insight into the association’s
discussions with HMRC on the future structure of taxation. 

Other issues discussed included tax schemes, changes to the Irish tax structure and HMRC investigations.

Our Managing Partners event on 19 April provided delegates with a full and interesting day. There was no formal agenda but the session touched on topics including member firms’ views of the current business environment, marketing MGI in their regions and HR issues.

On 24 May, our Younger Partners seminar brought together delegates to look at issues likely to face them over the coming years. There was a sizeable gathering of younger partners and their wide-ranging discussions covered topics including service lines, future planning – and the lack of it – work-life balance and the ability, or otherwise, to influence decisions affecting the shorter and long-term success of their firms.

Delegates were also able to look in more detail at each other’s succession planning, which generally fell into one of three categories: talking about it; talking about it but still working their way to the right approach; and not yet doing anything.

On 1 June, our Acting for Doctors seminar provided an interesting insight into the specialism in the healthcare sector that some of our members are developing.

They include Rowleys, where Glyn Rawlings has joined the medical sector team headed by director Paula Swann-Jones team as its in-house medical sector specialist, Milsted Langdon, where partner David Jacobs is a member of the National Association of Specialist Dental Accountants, and Rickard Keen, whose managing partner Alan Worsdale and manager Wayne Baker are members of the Association of Independent Specialist Medical Accountants.

Next sessions on the agenda will be our Non-Partner seminar on 1-2 July, our Marketing seminar on 14 July and our Forensic Accountants event on 6 September.