Vijay Merchant joins Birmingham restructuring wing of Duff & Phelps
Duff & Phelps has bolstered its restructuring practice in Birmingham with the appointment of Director Vijay Merchant. Joining from KPMG, Merchant brings more than a decade of deal advisory experience to the role.
A global provider of advisory services that aims to help clients with critical restructuring exercises, Duff & Phelps is often called upon to perform corporate rescue work. While the consulting firm is also responding to rising demand in its compliance offering, restructuring work takes up the lion’s share of the headlines concerning Duff & Phelps, particularly as the number of insolvencies in the UK has exploded since 2016.
In a bid to further strengthen its restructuring advisory practice in Birmingham, Duff & Phelps has appointed Vijay Merchant as Director. With particular expertise in advising company directors, lenders and other stakeholders when a business is facing financial distress and cash flow challenges, Merchant brings more than 13 years of consulting experience to the role.
Joining Duff & Phelps from KPMG, Merchant spent more than a decade working with the Big Four firm’s clients in its deal advisory team. Before moving on from KPMG, he held the rank of Associate Director, and also completed a 12-month secondment to the business support team of Barclays’ high street clearing bank. During his career, he has attained significant expertise in advising company directors, lenders and other stakeholders when a business is facing financial distress and cash flow challenges.
Commenting on the appointment, Matt Ingram, Managing Director, Duff & Phelps, said, “Vijay has extensive experience advising businesses whether they seek to stabilise short-term cash flow, review their options, look for additional or alternate finance, or equity fund raising. Vijay also has a proven track record in managing stakeholder relations through pre-lend and viability reviews on behalf of lenders and investors and independent business reviews for the clearing banks. I am delighted that Vijay has chosen to join the Duff & Phelps team here in Birmingham as we take our stressed advisory offering from strength to strength.”
The number of UK businesses in significant financial distress in the first quarter of 2019 has increased, while those under critical distress has ramped up by 17% on last year’s levels. According to recent research by Begbies Traynor, some 484,000 businesses are vulnerable, thanks to a perfect storm of economic and geo-political uncertainty. Should things not improve drastically, the figures point to a probable boom in bankruptcy & restructuring service demand, even if only half of those firms are forced into insolvency proceedings.
