Experience

Gerard joined Grant Thornton in Dublin in 2011 and transferred to Cork in 2013. Gerard is a member of the FAAS management team.

The FAAS department in Grant Thornton specialises in offering audit and assurance services to public companies, larger private companies and international groups.

He has extensive EMEA finance coordination and transition management experience with a number of large multinational groups across a range of sectors and locations (Dublin, Brussels, Madrid and Barcelona). As a former finance director in companies with both centralised and decentralised finance functions Gerard has overseen the entire finance function in various jurisdictions.

Sector experience

Gerard has been involved in a number of assignments as the single point of contact for multinational clients since joining Grant Thornton and as such is familiar with the international community and works extensively with other Grant Thornton member firms. The projects have included transition management, coordination of statutory accounting and international payroll activity in EMEA and APAC.

Further details of his projects at Grant Thornton and in previous companies are as follows:

• supported a large multinational with the outsourcing of accounting, reporting and controls for it’s companies in India including process risk control and the establishment of metrics to both negotiate key targets and track and control performance;
• advised and supported a large multinational in accrual calculation structures and balance sheet review for one of its major software engineer centres, including delivery of accruals in line with tight reporting timetable;
• advised and supported a large multinational client in the outsourcing of it’s accounting and reporting for EMEA to an external company in Romania including the introduction of metrics model to ensure a quality handover and subsequently track performance;  
• managing and finance director role overseeing the acquisition of a large manufacturing and sales business and integrating this with the existing organisation including harmonisation of customer terms, including renegotiation where necessary;
• managed the turnaround of the subsidiaries of a large manufacturing and sales multinational business in Ireland, Spain and Portugal from loss to profit making as managing and finance director, including introduction of customer and project profitability model;
• designed and built management reporting tools to track business performance for a number of multinational entities in both the manufacturing and supply chain industries as finance manager, communicating results in both organisations to both functional and local business stakeholders; and
• created both EMEA and global consolidations for a supply chain airline at their headquarters in Belgium.