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AIA

Target goes into administration

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29th Nov 2011
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Top 40 firm Target Chartered Accountants called in administrators from PwC on Monday after admitting defeat to growing financial pressures.

Set up as a specialist tax consultancy by Mark Harman and Gavin Lenthall in 1998, the company began to broaden its capabilities under the leadership of joint managing director Keith Seely in 2002. A series of acquisitions saw the company develop six integrated services including audit and assurance, business services, corporate finance, financial advice and management and HR consultancy.

It has almost 200 employees working at offices in Bath, London, Reading and the Midlands. In April this year, it opened a new office in Bristol's Temple Quarter.

The firm’s Bath office has acted for more than a decade as auditor for Sift, the company behind AccountingWEB.co.uk. Target clients (including Sift’s finance team) were notified that PwC had been appointed as administrator on Monday 28 November.

Two factors appear to have played a part in the firm’s demise. The first, according to New Model Adviser was £1.m being claimed by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme from the firm on behalf of Keydata investors who put their money into the failed investment company’s traded life settlement investments.

In the background, however, was a burden of debt from the 2003-08 acquisition drive. Like many other organisations wrestling with debt hangovers from the boom years, Target was not able to absorb the additional shock of the TSCS claim.

Most of the local Target offices are understood to be discussing buy-out possibilities with the administrators.

Having recently signed off Sift’s latest statutory accounts and had them approved at an AGM on 22 November, financial director Steven Priscott wished the Target team well and looked forward to continuing the relationship with the auditor’s reconstituted Bath office.

“Andrew Sandiford and his team are an excellent, business-driven firm of accountants. Hopefully a phoenix can rise from the ashes,” Priscott said.

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By Frustrated Accountant
29th Nov 2011 12:51

Good luck to all those facing losing their jobs.

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By Tkwhitehouse
29th Nov 2011 22:17

Good luck to all the employees

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