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Business valuations
We offer expert valuation advice in transactions, regulatory and administrative matters, and matters subject to dispute – valuing businesses, shares and intangible assets in a wide range of industries.
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Capital markets
You need corporate finance specialists experienced in international capital markets on your side if you’re buying or selling financial securities.
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Complex and international services
Our experience of multi-jurisdictional insolvencies coupled with our international reputation allows us to deliver the best possible outcome for all stakeholders.
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Corporate insolvency
Our corporate investigation and recovery teams can help you manage insolvency situations and facilitate the best outcome.
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Debt advisory
An optimal funding structure for your organisation presents unprecedented opportunities, but achieving this can be difficult without a trusted advisor.
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Expert witness
Our expert witnesses analyse, interpret, summarise and present complex financial and business-related issues which are understandable and properly supported.
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Financial models
A sound financial model will help you understand the impact of your decisions before you make them. Talk to us about our user-friendly models.
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Forensic and investigation services
We provide investigative accounting and litigation support services for commercial, matrimonial, criminal, business valuation and insurance disputes.
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Independent business review
Is your business viable? Will it remain viable in the future? A thorough independent business review can help your organisation answer these fundamental questions.
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IT forensics
Effective ESI analysis is integral to the success of your business. Our IT forensics experts have the technical expertise to identify, preserve and interrogate electronic data.
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Mergers and acquisitions
Grant Thornton provides strategic and execution support for mergers, acquisitions, sales and fundraising.
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Raising finance
Raising finance - funders value partners who can deliver a robust financial model, a sound business strategy and rigorous planning. We can guide you through the challenges that these transactions can pose and help you build a foundation for long term success once the deal is done.
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Relationship property services
Grant Thornton offers high quality independent advice on the many financial issues associated with relationship property from considering an individual financial issue to all aspects of a complex settlement.
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Restructuring and turnaround
Grant Thornton’s restructuring and turnaround service capabilities include cash flow, liquidity management and forecasting; crisis and interim management; financial advisory services to companies and parties in transition and distress
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Transaction advisory
Our depth of market knowledge will steer you through the transaction process. Grant Thornton’s dynamic teams offer range of financial, commercial and operational expertise.
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Virtual asset advisory
Helping you navigate the world of virtual currencies and decentralised financial systems.
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Corporate tax
Grant Thornton can identify tax issues, risks and opportunities in your organisation and implement strategies to improve your bottom line.
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Employment tax
Grant Thornton’s advisers can help you with PAYE (payroll tax), Kiwisaver, fringe benefits tax (FBT), student loans, global mobility services, international tax
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Global mobility services
Our team can help expatriates and their employers deal with tax and employment matters both in New Zealand and overseas. With the correct planning advice, employee allowances and benefits may be structured to avoid double taxation and achieve tax savings.
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GST
GST has the potential to become a minefield and can be expensive when it goes wrong. Our technical knowledge can help you minimise the negative impact of GST
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International tax
International tax rules are undergoing their biggest change in a generation. Tax authorities around the world are increasingly vigilant, especially when it comes to global operations.
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Research and Development
R&D tax incentives are often underused and misunderstood – is your business maximising opportunities for making claims?
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Tax compliance
Our advisers help clients manage the critical issue of compliance across accountancy regulations, corporation law and tax. We also offer business and wealth advisory services, which means we can provide a seamless and tax-effective offering to our clients.
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Transfer pricing
Tax authorities are demanding transparency in international arrangements. We businesses comply with regulations and use transfer pricing as a strategic planning tool.
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Audit methodology
Our five step audit methodology offers a high quality service wherever you are in the world and includes planning, risk assessment, testing internal controls, substantive testing, and concluding and reporting
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Audit technology
We apply our audit methodology with an integrated set of software tools known as the Voyager suite. Our technology has been developed to produce quality audits that are effective and efficient.
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Financial reporting advisory
Our financial reporting advisers have the expertise to help you deal with the constantly evolving regulatory environment.
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Business architecture
Our business architects help businesses with disruptive conditions, business expansion and competitive challenges; the deployment of your strategy is critical to success.
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Cloud services
Leverage the cloud to keep your data safe, operate more efficiently, reduce costs and create a better experience for your employees and clients.
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Internal audit
Our internal audits deliver independent assurance over key controls within your riskiest processes, proving what works and what doesn’t and recommending improvements.
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IT advisory
Our hands on product experience, extensive functional knowledge and industry insights help clients solve complex IT and technology issues
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IT privacy and security
IT privacy and security should support your business strategy. Our pragmatic approach focuses on reducing cyber security risks specific to your organisation
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Payroll assurance
Our specialist payroll assurance team can conduct a review of your payroll system configuration and processes, and then help you and your team to implement any necessary recalculations.
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PCI DSS
Our information security specialists are approved Qualified Security Assessors (QSAs) that have been qualified by the PCI Security Standards Council to independently assess merchants and service providers.
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Process improvement
As your organisation grows in size and complexity, processes that were once enabling often become cumbersome and inefficient. To maintain growth, your business must remain flexible, agile and profitable
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Procurement/supply chain
Procurement and supply chain inputs will often dominate your balance sheet and constantly evolve for organisations to remain competitive and meet changing customer requirements
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Project assurance
Major programmes and projects expose you to significant financial and reputational risk throughout their life cycle. Don’t let these risks become a reality.
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Risk management
We understand that growing companies need to establish robust internal controls, and use information technology to effectively mitigate risk.
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Robotic process automation (RPA)
RPA is emerging as the most sophisticated form of automation used to help businesses become more agile and remain competitive in the face of today’s ongoing digital disruption.
![insight featured image](/contentassets/d575f4f3accb4aeca047b882bab368e8/futures-thinking-feature-image.jpg)
Enter futures thinking. Focusing only on your immediate challenges is like walking along and staring at your feet. You might be fine, but you’re making it hard to avoid obstacles. Look up! You’re far more likely to reach your destination. That’s what futures thinking is all about. Looking out and up, to create a vision that can guide your business and your employees through an uncertain future.
What is futures thinking?
There is nothing magical about futures thinking. It’s not crystal ball gazing or fortune telling. It’s simply asking: ‘What happens after what happens next?’ By purposefully considering a 10 or 20-year horizon, you can steer toward your preferred future. It’s about preparation, not prediction. And it’s important to know this isn’t just a vague brainstorming exercise over a long lunch. There are well-established tools and methodologies to guide futures thinking, so organisations can prepare to respond to future challenges and opportunities.
Futures thinking is integral to effective risk management. It readies your organisation for various scenarios, and even if those exact scenarios don’t eventuate, the business has better tools to cope with whatever lies ahead.
It’s also the difference between leadership and management. Management is dealing with the problems in front of you. Leadership is being able to stand up with a vision for the future and bring your team along with you. It’s aligning people with the company vision and where it’s heading – steering the company more effectively even through choppy waters.
Foresight boosts profitability by 33%, market cap growth up 200%
If futures thinking still seems like a luxury item in tough economic conditions, it’s worth knowing how powerful it could be for your business.
A 2018 Danish study was published after following companies for seven years, measuring their level of corporate foresight and tracking their success. The firms with the best approach to corporate foresight achieved 33% higher profitability, and market capitalisation growth was 200% higher than average.
The researchers discovered the vigilant firms had embedded their futures thinking, using effective structures for R&D, marketing, and strategic decision-making. Many had also set up mechanisms to integrate start-ups, improving readiness for various futures.
You are already a future thinker
If the idea of incorporating formal corporate foresight into your business seems daunting, it shouldn’t.
You are already a future thinker. If you’ve booked a holiday, for instance, you know nothing is set in stone and the holiday might not happen. But you save up, choose your accommodation, and check the weather at your destination for that time of year. You’re looking ahead, then back-filling what needs to happen so you get to enjoy your trip. You know things might go wrong, so you also take out travel insurance.
You book a holiday because it’s your preferred future. Scale that holiday up – think of the preferred future for your organisation and back-fill so you know the kinds of steps you need to take to reach it.
At an organisational level, it’s about taking a longer planning horizon. At least 10 years. Ideally 20 or even 30 years. You have a destination in mind, where your organisation is still successful and relevant. It might not be doing the same core work it does now. You may need to transform and evolve your company to fit into the economic food chain of the future. But with higher profits and growth on offer, futures thinking is well worth the effort.
A strategy can bring certainty in times of polycrisis
There are four mega trends that are creating the Polycrisis we are living through, and they are impacting all organisations:
- Climate change: Natural disasters, aging infrastructure, managed retreat (moving to higher ground if you live close to the water), and climate-related events.
- Geopolitical tensions and wars: This includes changes in relationships with traditional allies, and concerns about the resiliency of supply chains for imports and exports.
- Technology shifts: New technologies are both a blessing and a curse as the speed of change is disruptive and can cause uncertainty. AI and its potential for good and bad is creating excitement and trepidation in equal measure – resulting in even more uncertainty.
- Global economic uncertainty: As Professor Sohail Inayatullah says, “Business as usual only works when the world is stable”. And after a decade of economic stability, the post- COVID world is anything but stable.
Futures thinking helps your business hold a steady, but flexible line through polycrises and uncertainty. Your organisation is better prepared for climate change and the changing geopolitical landscape.
Not only do each of these mega trends contribute to their own crisis, they each also exacerbate the other – and collectively create an even bigger problem: A Polycrisis where the sum is greater than the parts. Sometimes the sheer scale and challenges created by a Polycrisis can create a totally new crisis, in this case, a global mental health epidemic: The inexorable rise of many mental disorders including, anxiety, depression and substance abuse.
This is where futures thinking can also help build a stronger workforce. The global mental health epidemic is partly a reaction to the previous four megatrends – war, climate change, technological shifts, and economic hardship, all of which create uncertainty, leading to stress. This will affect your team; half of the world’s population will experience a mental health disorder in their lifetime, according to Harvard Medical research across 29 nations.
Building a strong vision for your business, and leading it with conviction, will help give your employees more certainty for the future. Demonstrating leadership, and having business continuity planning, will support your workforce to be a positive place that can retain its workers.
Taking a positive perspective and seizing opportunities
It’s human nature to envision dystopian futures – whole genres of movies and literature cash in on that tendency. But futures thinking is ultimately optimistic. It is a vital decision-making tool. It identifies opportunities and helps leaders know whether to grab these or decline them. It minimises losses and maximises wins. It lets you leverage new technologies like AI and minimise risks from the potential dark side of these innovations.
For business owners who are within 10 years of retirement, instead of sitting back and letting your company fund your lifestyle, it’s time to look out and up. Build a business that can outlive you – it will be more valuable, it will deliver better returns in the short term, and it will be a fantastic legacy to leave behind when you retire.
Acknowledgements:Lee Parkinson
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