Canberra-based advisory BellchambersBarrett has had a very busy two-year stretch, with the agency’s headcount now ticking past the 100-mark following its current ten-year anniversary.
Established in Canberra in 2014 by former PwC pair Shane Bellchambers and James Barrett with a crew of simply 4 and its employees conferences held round a house eating desk, the accounting and consulting agency has now grown to greater than 100 professionals, together with eleven extra companions.
Two of these – former PwC managers Sart Spinks and Jamie Glenn – joined the fledgling agency in its earliest days earlier than being elevated to the partnership in 2020, whereas one other pair, Brandon Brown and Phil Sands, got here on board on the finish of final yr after each had beforehand spent upwards of 5 years as companions at KPMG and altogether twenty years on the Massive 4 agency.
The quartet neatly bookend a fast interval of development for BellchambersBarrett, together with an particularly busy previous twenty-four months, with the agency transferring into a contemporary new workplace at 14 Childers Road on the Canberra metropolis fringe in the course of 2023, partially to accommodate the acquisition of longstanding native enterprise Accrue Chartered Accountants.
The addition of the Accrue crew, together with associates Don Di Placido and Mark De Bortoli, has helped the agency to virtually double its headcount because the begin of 2022. The interval since has additionally seen the promotion of two extra founding workers to accomplice – Kathleen Buckley and Russel Livermore – and the recruitment of Miranda Garnett to steer a newly-launched social advisory providers observe.
Of the remaining 4 companions, Vicki Sofatzis and Aaron Froud each joined in 2021, respectively from Deloitte and KPMG, whereas Jamie Lucas and Sean Michelle are each pushing in the direction of their very own ten-year anniversaries with the agency, the latter who arrived by way of its merger with Deborah Poulton & Associates, with Poulton retiring from the partnership in 2022.
Speedy development
Such fast development has seen BellchambersBarrett grow to be one in all Australia’s high 60 largest organisations of its variety, climbing into 59th spot on the AFR’s newest annual rankings on the again of a large 48 p.c income leap in 2024 in the direction of the $20 million mark – making it the third-fastest rising accounting and advisory agency within the nation.
That trajectory would not seem prone to be slowing up anytime quickly both. Final yr, BellchambersBarrett gained a major Division of Finance audit contract off the co-founders’ former employer PwC, whereas the agency was additionally famous as the most important Defence division consulting contractor within the first half of final yr, beating out the likes of the Massive 4, Accenture and Scyne Advisory.
Satirically, in an in-house interview from 2021, Bellchambers mentioned a part of the motivation for establishing the agency was a want to return to a smaller crew surroundings, after becoming a member of future PwC acquisition WalterTurnbull in 1993 when it was a seven-person crew and watching it develop to greater than 300 (amongst these Barrett, who crossed from EY) earlier than then turning into a accomplice at PwC.
To counter the potential drawbacks of its personal important development, the co-founders have positioned an enormous emphasis on folks and tradition from day one, and proceed to espouse such an method: “We attempt to put folks on the forefront of the whole lot we do. Internally, we deal with one another as equals, and we strongly encourage a wholesome work-life steadiness. We all know individuals are our property.”
