Make a lasting difference to companies that are underperforming or in outright crisis. In Business Recovery Services, you'll help turn round organisations in distress and, in the process, learn a huge amount about running a business.
Find out more about Business Recovery Services
Financial Advisory
What we do
From small family organisations to major multinationals, Business Recovery Services (BRS) works with underperforming businesses and/or their stakeholders to help them understand and solve their problems. This might mean coming up with strategies to turn the company around or guiding it through liquidation.
With over 800 staff in 22 offices, ours is the UK's largest Business Recovery Services practice. We work with colleagues across the entire breadth and depth of the firm, from Tax and Assurance to Advisory, to give our clients the specialist knowledge they need to make the right decisions.
Whether clients need advice, restructuring or refinancing, our people have the expertise to help. Our services include:
- Turnaround implementation
- Financial, operational & strategic advice
- Working capital management
- Optimised exit services
- Accelerated mergers & acquisitions
- Solvent reconstructions
- Insurance company run-off
- Receivables management
- Formal insolvency arrangements
To win the confidence of clients we have to show both empathy and objectivity. We also need the credibility to make convincing arguments even in the face of resistance from clients who may be reluctant to 'bite the bullet' and take difficult decisions. It’s absorbing work. And it offers unusually high exposure to all-round aspects of running a business - plus, in many cases, hands-on implementation of recommendations.
What you'll do
Your first couple of years are geared to giving you as much exposure to different clients and challenges as possible. This invaluable on-the-job experience will develop your technical skills and personal effectiveness.
Your initial responsibilities might include liaising with creditors, which calls for tact, sensitivity and assertiveness. You'll see more than just the finance side of things too - professional services firms in business recovery situations often have to turn their attention to issues such as HR or IT.
Whether you're involved in research, modelling, report-writing or data analysis, your work - where recovery is judged viable - will help rescue a business, perhaps saving jobs and reducing liabilities to creditors. No wonder it’s so rewarding.
You'll also spend time in Assurance - giving you one of the best business educations around, strong foundations for your role advising clients in BRS and a network of contacts across the firm.
Our culture
Time is often of the essence in BRS. If we are to rescue a client, everyone has to pull together and that demands a true sense of teamwork. It makes celebrating achievements all the better though. Much of the satisfaction of successfully turning round a business whose management was convinced it was 'going under' stem from the fact that the work was a genuine team effort.
Training and development
The skills you'll develop in BRS will help you build a career both within this specific area and the wider firm. You’ll learn how to view a business holistically but with a strategic eye - assimilating all you see and hear about every facet of the organisation, considering those factors in the context of its current financial situation and devising a plan going forward. The business intuition and decision-making skills you'll develop will have wide applications.
You’ll join on the PwC Experience programme (Generalist Route). This offers the widest possible experience while you train and gives you a platform to make informed decisions about your career.
Your technical training involves study for the ACA qualification with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW). But you’ll also spend time working closely with colleagues who liaise with financiers, then with those who restructure debt and finally, alongside insolvency specialists.
All this will give you plenty of opportunity to discover which areas interest you most, and decide where you'd like to work after you qualify.
About you
The work we do calls for people with:
- innate problem-solving ability the perseverance to identify and explore every option - no matter how unlikely - to save clients' businesses
- people skills and a genuine ability to empathise
- good standards of numeracy to grapple with the financials
- a flair for the written word
- a 2.1 in any discipline and 300 UCAS points (or equivalent).
If you’re after endless variety and challenge, plus a genuine opportunity to learn about what makes successful businesses tick - and why others fail - apply now.