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Michael, tell me about your background.

I’m a London-suburbs-born and raised Chartered Accountant (ICAEW) and Certified Fraud Examiner. I studied Management (BSc) at the University of Manchester and began my career in the audit practice of Ernst & Young (EY) in London. In 2013, having qualified as a Chartered Accountant, I moved into EY’s forensic practice, marking the start of my career in disputes. In 2015, I joined Haberman Ilett, spending three formative years participating in the growth of a dispute advisory boutique and learning from some truly remarkable individuals. In 2018, I moved to Madrid and re-joined EY’s forensic practice. Two years later and several months into the COVID pandemic, the opportunity to join HKA when our Forensic Accounting and Commercial Damages (FACD) practice came about, which meant a return to London. Finally (for the time being at least), in 2022, I moved back to Madrid to set up HKA’s Spanish office, which is where I am currently based.

In addition to mastering the logistics of moving between London and Madrid, since embarking on a career in forensics, I have had the opportunity to work on a diverse range of matters, both geographically and by sector. This has meant a number of steep but incredibly rewarding learning curves, including those that led to me cutting my teeth as a testifying expert in English and Spanish language matters.

Why is HKA a stand-out employer for you? 

There are a number of reasons, but for the sake of keeping this response concise, I’ll focus on two in particular.

One of my main motivations for joining HKA was the opportunity to act on some of the most complex and interesting matters, working alongside some of the best and brightest in the industry. Expert work can be particularly challenging but equally, can be incredibly rewarding. It is a combination of technical ability and experience, with both carrying a significant value. Being able to act on complex matters which both demand and permit an expert to be at their best on each and every occasion, whilst being able to leverage the experience and knowledge of others in the process is, in my opinion, about as rewarding an experience as one could ask for.

The other motivation for joining HKA was the opportunity to work alongside individuals from other geographies and specialisms as part of a multidisciplinary team. And my expectations have been met and exceeded — it is a genuinely collaborative firm, with everyone pulling in the same direction. The multidisciplinary approach and mentality are reflected in numerous ways. This includes going to market and offering a full suite of services. It also includes the actual performance of work and leveraging the knowledge of our technical experts to understand the crux of a matter and, in doing so, accurately shape the narrative of the damages model.

What do you love about the field you work in?

As previously mentioned, the work of an expert is not for the faint-hearted. You can spend several months putting your blood, sweat and tears into a series of expert reports, with the not-so-small possibility that you will be challenged on each and every assumption and conclusion under cross-examination, or that you may be faced with the ‘graveyard’ shift of a hearing to explain complex financial matters to an understandably weary audience.

That being said, and as also previously mentioned, it can be incredibly rewarding. Expert work is a curious combination of technical expertise, creative thinking, and storytelling. It is the type of work where you can arrive home each afternoon (evening/night) and be mentally exhausted, but for all the right reasons. Every matter represents a new challenge to take technical expertise and experience and mould it to the specifics of said matter in order to answer the relevant questions. And then, once you have performed your analysis and established your arguments, comes the fun part. Writing a concise yet convincing expert report that delivers your message and anticipates potential counterarguments. It is an art. And I consider myself very fortunate to work in a career that combines science (the technical bit) with art (the writing bit).

What is your favourite aspect about working with clients and legal teams?

One of my favourite aspects of this job is the bit that happens in the trenches. Depending on how familiar the client, legal team and expert team are, at the outset, everything can be quite…formal. However, when crunch time approaches, be it a written submission or the hearing, the formalities fade away, and it is in those moments that knowledge sharing occurs, the appreciation for one another’s efforts is shown and the relationships are built.

To give an example, I had spent two years working on a matter that was, in simple terms, ‘accounting heavy’, much to everyone’s delight. The hearing was fast approaching, and as is relatively common, I was working late on cross-examining the counterparty’s expert. At about 2am, I received a call from a senior member of Counsel, with whom I had spoken only briefly up to that point. What followed was a tense discussion that started with a seemingly straightforward question, was followed by a few expletives (expletives of frustration at the counterintuitive nature of accounting concepts), and ended with a thank you. It is a memory that sticks with me to this day and one of my fondest – a tale from the trenches.

Is this career path what you had originally set out to do? As a teenager, what did you want your career to look like?

The short answer is no. I’m not sure any teenager would walk away happy from one of those career assessment tests with the response “forensic accountant” (expert possibly, provided there isn’t too much context as to what that actually means).

I spent most of my childhood and teenage years either playing or watching football – courtesy of a mother who, to put her fan status into context, has followed her team from Astana, Kazakhstan to Bodø, Norway and beyond. I spent my school holidays in football camps. My university selection was in no small part due to the fact that it was getting quite exhausting to suffer the M1 and M6 motorways every other weekend to watch my team play at Old Trafford. I was very much set on a career in football.

However, I tore my left cruciate ligament in 2007 (and the right one in 2015), so a playing career was not a possibility, lack of talent aside.

And for some reason that I can’t recall, without really exploring the multitude of other careers in sport, I turned to more traditional career options – I enjoyed economics, I was relatively capable at maths, a combination of those plus a few other factors essentially steered me towards my degree decision and, in turn, determined my career path.

Fast-forward 15 or so years and, whilst not what my teenage self had in mind, I am very proud of my career to date. I am also excited about the future of our profession. Speaking as a young practitioner (over 30, under 40…so ‘young’ but not ‘very young’), we have a near-perfect combination of technological developments, increasingly sophisticated and complex cases, and an exceptionally smart and driven peer group (experts and other practitioners alike).

What is your favourite thing about living in Madrid?

Sunlight, food, wine, culture, quality of living, the list goes on. If I had to choose, it would probably be the sunlight. As an English person, grey skies are a part of our being. Sunlight is a nice to have but several weeks or months without it isn’t an uncommon occurrence. A basement bar for after-work drinks is perfectly acceptable given that the difference between exterior light and interior light isn’t noticeable.

In Madrid, I discovered sunlight and terraces. I also discovered that, presumably due to the number of hours of sunlight (and, in turn, the length of the day), it is typical for public services, shops, restaurants, etc. to be open late into the evening.

A longer day alleviates the pressure of having to rush between one place and another. It also alleviates the pressure one places on the weekend. It is very conducive to a slower pace of life, which isn’t a bad thing at all, particularly when the stress of the day job reaches those inevitable highs.

What is something about you that might surprise people?

Whilst I am now a fluent Spanish speaker, I came to Spain with a relatively limited grasp of the language (to put it generously). A few memories of the language learning experience that may be worth sharing:

1. Having recently met my now-wife (Spanish), I thought I would do something ‘original’ and take Spanish classes after work to impress her. At the first class, I looked around the room, ten or so men, one woman. In response to the ice-breaker “Why do you want to learn Spanish?”, I would say that about 90% of the students, myself included, responded – “I’ve met a Spanish person…”, turns out it wasn’t particularly ‘original’. It also wasn’t appreciated by my now-wife, given that the teacher was from Argentina, and apparently it’s not “all the same”, it isn’t a computadora, nor is it a celular.
2. Having arrived in Madrid in 2018, I went to the office on my first day at EY (Madrid) and more or less understood that I would be having my IT induction that afternoon. If there is one way to test one’s foreign language skills, or lack thereof, it is an IT induction. If there is one way to completely destroy one’s confidence in their ability to learn a foreign language, it is an IT induction in a foreign language. Shortly after I asked the company to enroll me in an intensive business language course. They were probably as relieved that I’d asked as I was that they approved it.

What are your passions outside of work?

Travelling has always been part of my life. My mother (the football fanatic) worked in the travel sector for a number of years, and I have some very fond memories of travelling to South Africa as a kid to ‘test’ hotels that they were considering listing. It wasn’t a bad way to develop an appetite for travel.

My travel outlook has (unsurprisingly) changed somewhat since starting a family. We managed to accustom the first child to overseas travel pretty quickly with the back-and-forth between London and Madrid so once checked-in it was relatively easy. However, a second child and the additional luggage requirements have meant our recent trips and short-term travel plans have become increasingly Iberian peninsula-focused.

Whilst not strictly outside of work, I also very much enjoy work travel, be it for project work or for business development. When I joined EY (London) back in 2010, in my capacity as an overly keen junior, I recall learning of an audit project that required travel to Romania and India. I promptly sent an overly enthusiastic email to the audit manager stating my keen interest in the ‘client’, the ‘sector’, etc.. They saw straight through it. The response was damning  – “Thanks for your interest, the client’s name is actually spelt ******, I think you are thinking of the company ******…”. Still, I managed to get on the project in my second year and was able to experience working in both Cluj-Napoca and New Delhi. When I moved into the Forensics department, I started taking my passport to work ‘just in case’. It resulted in numerous other trips, including a 12-hour stint in New York for a forensic interview which lasted all of 3 minutes before the interviewee’s lawyer intervened and politely advised us that we would not be able to ask any further questions.

In my current role, a combination of hearings and conferences has afforded me the opportunity to travel to a variety of destinations. With Latin America representing a key market for HKA, I look forward to getting to know the region better first-hand.

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