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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
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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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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
Our team is led by cloud business experts who tailor services to the needs of your organisation, from strategy and implementation to ongoing services assurance.
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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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Organisational & cultural change
The key to sustainable and future growth is a unified organisation operating within a strong cultural context, where transparency and communication are the priority for Kaimahi, and where visible leadership means walking the talk – but where does that journey begin?
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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.
Construction is one of our biggest industries – and it’s broken.
The cost to build a house is too high: entry level housing currently costs around $3,800 per square metre – but if we look overseas, it should be closer to $1,200 per square metre, according to submissions to the Commerce Commission.
High prices are tough on consumers, and they aren’t translating into success for those in the industry, either. Our $40bn construction sector is surprisingly inefficient, with serious structural inefficiencies that lead to precarious profits – which are easily wiped out by issues like supply chain problems and labour shortages.
The way we operate now is simply unsustainable – so what can we do? Here are five ways we could improve the construction industry and reduce the cost of building.
1. Embrace standardisation – and get rid of urban villas
When you want to design a new car, you don’t start from scratch. Most modern cars are based on existing chassis, with parts that are used on several models. The different body shapes and badges give you a sense that you’re choosing from a wide array of cars, but when you buy an Audi, a VW or a Skoda, they’re all built on the same adjustable platform.
If we could follow suit and use standardised housing designs, our builders could easily become experts in constructing these models quickly and efficiently. We could streamline the consent process, too. Compared to building a one-off home, this could save hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single home. Kainga Ora does this already, with its one, two, and three-storey walk-up designs in left and right-hand rotations. They look great, and because they’re highly standardised, they can be built economically using a series of massive supplier contracts. Our group home builders do this too, and although they are well-known because they’re great at marketing, compared to similar countries overseas they make up a surprisingly small share of our construction market. It would be good to see that share increase.
Plus, these modern designs are not only faster and cheaper to build, they’re also superior to live in. They’re warmer, more efficient and more practical. We need to take some inspiration from Clarke Gayford and haul all the lovely old villas out of our city centres and relocate them to the countryside where they belong. In their place we need warm, dry homes constructed for this century, instead of draughty hundred-year-old houses tarted up by home stagers.
2. Let’s automate and prefabricate
New Zealand businesses have a habit of throwing cheap labour at problems instead of investing in automation. It’s a key factor that hamstrings our productivity and it’s long been the construction industry’s preferred problem-solving solution. Investing in factories to build pre-fabricated construction products might be costly in the short-term, but in the long-term it would help bring down building costs dramatically.
Prefabrication comes in progressions, from simple frame-and-truss panels to more complex panels which include utilities, all the way up to fully-integrated kitchen and bathroom pods. The upsides of prefabrication are well-known – you can build them indoors in any weather and ship them anywhere around New Zealand to be assembled rapidly on site. We have the technology and the skills to be fantastic at this, but we’re seeing very little headway in making it a widespread practice.
3. A buying group would mean pricing power and more reliable supply
Materials are imported by thousands of businesses around the country, moving from importer to wholesaler to retailer to builder before reaching the customer, with each one taking a tiny margin. It’s death by a thousand cuts by the time a product arrives at the end user, and the small local businesses in that supply chain often struggle to survive on slender margins.
New Zealand desperately needs a buying group for key building materials like structural steel, timber and plasterboard. If we could get the Builders Federation, Master Builders, BRANZ, the Property Council and other industry groups together, they could create a buying group to bulk order these essentials and provide them at far better prices. The pricing and supply security for these essentials, means all businesses in the construction industry would benefit.
4. More onshoring would help future-proof the industry
We’re a small country at the bottom of the world, which means we should be more self-sufficient. It’s great that Aotearoa can feed its people, but can we house them? I’d argue being more self-reliant is imperative for the future of our construction industry.
When major shipping lines are trying to cut costs, we’re a D-list client: it costs a lot to get here, and they don’t make much money out of us compared to other destinations. New Zealand is the first choice to be dropped off the shipping route, which means we’re hit hard by any supply chain snarl-up. Waiting on ships full of building materials is not a sustainable proposition. The just-in-time supply chain is not coming back, the cost of fuel is huge and the carbon footprint for these materials is increasingly coming under scrutiny.
Onshoring our production of essential materials might be more expensive in the short-term, but in the long run it should pay dividends for everyone, driving better profitability and ultimately a stronger economy.
5. Broader specifications would create competition
People beyond the construction industry think GIB is the generic name for plasterboard, that’s how wedded to the brand we are. Architects make specifications based on these household names and councils push back against alternatives, despite identical product performance. Competitors are forced out of the market, pushing up prices. One company has a 94% share of our plasterboard market; two companies have an 85% share of our concrete market.
Architects could help here: they need to specify a material that meets a certain code or standard, rather than simply writing in the name of the best-known product on the market. And councils need to broaden their understanding of product performance so they stop resisting excellent alternatives just because they’re less familiar.
Denser, smarter, more liveable cities
For decades we’ve been taking the easy route: turning farmland into suburbs with single-storey homes that force residents to commute for hours into urban centres. Compare that to the great cities of the world, which are compact and walkable, with retail at ground level and four levels of residential above that, served by an outstanding public transport system. We need to let go of our old habits and set ourselves up with dense, clever cities that suit our modern lifestyles.
Now is the time for our construction industry to change. There are so many smart people with fantastic ideas – let’s get them together to work out how to build better homes for future generations.
