The FINANCIAL — Grant Thornton Georgia, part of Grant Thornton International, increased its turnover by approximately 40% in 2010.
“This is the result of our new office, our local team, our complete range of services and the various contacts we developed to make Grant Thornton more visible and well known,” declared Nelson Petrosyan, Director/Partner of Grant Thornton Georgia.
“But it’s also the result of the development of the Georgian economy which is much better than in any other country in the post-soviet region,” Petrosyan added.
Grant Thornton Georgia, part of Grant Thornton International, is a multi-professional group of public accountants and auditors, specialist advisers in finance, business and management, as well as tax and legal advisers operating in Georgia since the year 1999.
Grant Thornton has experienced significant growth of its activities in Georgia in the past year. The company says the major factor behind such growth were the strategic decisions made by the company management, including but not limited to, increased level of market presence and expanding our investments related to obtaining a stronger presence in Georgia.
“Among the most important milestones for Grant Thornton in Georgia was the acquisition of a new contemporary office and increase of the human resource base. This allows meeting the ever increasing demand for high quality audit and advisory services on the Georgian market,” Nelson Petrosyan said.
“Other important factors behind our firm’s activity growth in 2010 were the increased marketing and networking activity by our team and the determined commitment to providing “red carpet” services to our clients. Of course, all these factors were predetermined by the favourable and liberal policies in Georgia, promoting growth of business and increase of transparency and consequently shifting upwards the demand for audit and advisory services in general.”
Q. What are the main directions and services provided by Grant Thornton Georgia?
A. Our firm is providing the full range of professional services: audit and assurance, business advisory, management consulting, governance, tax and legal support.
With a highlighted concentration of our activities in the audit services, our teams are also strongly focused on corporate finance, valuations, recovery and reorganizations, insolvency and business risk services.
One of the new service lines we introduced in Georgia during 2010 is the IT audit and advisory services, which is a new trend in professional services markets. We hope that pioneering these services in Georgia will come to serve the overall increase of IT governance and security culture and influence our presence on the Georgian market for IT related services. Increased demand for IT audit is also linked with Georgia’s strategic decision to continually strive for increased application of e-governance tools.
Q. IT audit is another area where Grant Thornton Georgia provides top IT advisory services, what is special about this service?
A. The broad name for this line is Business Risk Services. This includes advising businesses on the effectiveness of their governance, risk management and internal control systems. This includes internal audit, internal control reviews, IT Assurance, IT security, IT strategy, IT due diligence and IT assessment.
Methodology for the performance of Business Risk Services is based on standards issued by ISACA, the independent, global association, which engages in the development, adoption and use of globally accepted, industry-leading knowledge and practices for information systems.
This includes but is not limited to COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology), Guidelines and Procedures for Auditing and Control Professionals, ISO 17779 and ISO 27001:2005 best practices.
Q. Grant Thornton opened its first office in Georgia in 2005, how has the audit sector as well as the attitude of Georgian companies towards audit service changed since that period?
A. Grant Thornton has been operating in Georgia for 12 years now and we opened our offices in 2005. In 2010 Grant Thornton has driven itself to a new level of presence in Georgia and attracted local partners. So it’s a new departure for us and we are very satisfied with the first results of this new life.
As for the market, we believe that the Georgian market for audit services has been constantly improving, based on the growth of the economy and well articulated liberal economic policies of the Government. The private sector has shown significant growth and attraction of foreign investments has also contributed to the overall improvement of the economic environment. As a whole, we see Georgia’s economy to be on a dynamic and promising move.
The new tax legislation is a move towards clarifying the tax rules. Obviously, this will increase the interest of investors. Georgia is now a liberal area for business with long term perspectives. And that’s exactly what investors are looking for and the good ranking of Georgia in this World Bank study is, from our point of view, quite justified.
Q. How many clients does the company serve annually?
A. Our firm has a diverse client base in Georgia. We are providing professional services to both private and public sector entities, as well as to the international financial institutions and numerous donor-aided projects implemented in Georgia. We cover clients in many industries of the economy, including sectors such as infrastructure rehabilitation, energy, transportation, tourism and hospitality, construction, healthcare, education, agriculture, food and beverages, retail, etc.
The approximate number of contracts we serve in Georgia is around 70, but as you are aware we have certain obligations to maintain our client details confidential, therefore I would refrain from giving specific names of our clients, many of whom are prominent players in the Georgian economy.
The trend of client base increase is also to be noted, as the portfolio grows every year, due to high satisfaction of our existing clients by our services and their continuous interest in cooperation with Grant Thornton.
Q. What are the challenges as well as interesting factors in being an audit?
A. This is a really interesting subject matter. Many businessmen start from the thinking that audit is just a cost and an obligation mandated by shareholders, investors, creditors, donors and other stakeholders. Our primary challenge is to show them quickly that audit is a powerful tool and a real advantage for business management.
The first step for us is to show that we have a genuine interest in the business and not only in the company’s accounting records. The company financial statements are an interesting synopsis of the business activities. They include a great deal of clear and useful information, which, obviously, is important for the management as it provides fair and precise financial and accounting information. And audit is a powerful tool for that.
The second step is to help the company to provide assurances of reliability which is an absolute condition for its development. One day or another, the company will need to attract new financial resources for business growth, and when that day comes everything must be ready. This means that companies should not wait too long to engage an auditor; they have to think about this need as soon as possible in preparing for their future development.
These are the challenges for the company and its auditor. It’s a team deal; companies and auditors are not at all like enemies on different sides of the fence. Quite the contrary, they need to act as a team and that’s when the audit starts to be so useful!
Q. What challenges does Grant Thornton Georgia anticipate ahead of 2011?
A. As any firm and particularly in the industry of professional services, the major challenge we have is to maintain the highest level of client satisfaction.
We have very distinct understanding of our role and our deeds to come in Georgia. Our strategy is based on continuing to be a dynamic and highly professional firm with one and only target: to help our clients navigate through the complexity of their businesses.
With our human capital being our most valuable asset, we will continue to heavily invest in our people and their technical and professional capacities. Our team is a team of empowered people providing bold leadership and distinctive client service.
Along with that we will continue our efforts in technological improvements and ever increasing marketing activity, and also quite importantly, publicly speaking on issues of general concern.
Finally, we believe that the most significant added value for our clients is us being there for them and providing them with support and knowledge whenever they need it. Being next to our clients is one of the cornerstones of our corporate philosophy.
Q. How would you evaluate the financial documentations and statements of the current Georgian companies you are auditing? How has the situation as well as companies’ attitudes changed towards preparing more detailed and accurate financial documentations?
A. As in many areas, Georgia has changed a lot in recent years. Accounting personnel tend to be more and more qualified and experienced in international standards.
Many companies are also, now, with internal audit departments. Throughout the year, these internal audit departments address financial and accounting rules, they ensure daily compliance with regulations and conditions for preparing quality financial information. Internal audit function also oversees the processes of asset safeguarding, such as for example, the periodic stocktaking exercises.
So, globally speaking, the quality of financial documentation in Georgia is now closer to what you would expect to see in western countries. If not, the World Bank would not have given such a good ranking to Georgia!
Q. Do you have any seasonal greetings for our readers?
A. On behalf of all of us at Grant Thornton, please accept our warmest holiday wishes for every family, for every living heart. May the new year be an even better one and bring prosperity into our Georgia.
Discussion about this post