Varun Gupta | Partner, Consultax Accountants Limited

My Background

I read Accounting and Finance at Warwick, graduating with a First. I am ACA qualified through ICAEW and trained at PwC across Assurance and Business Advisory Services, before spending close to a decade in investment banking with UBS, BNP Paribas and HSBC, working across market risk, product control and valuation.

I also spent time at Standard Life focusing on private equity investments, which gave me a ground level understanding of how portfolio companies are valued, scrutinised and pushed to perform. More recently I completed a Private Equity programme at Oxford University to keep my thinking current on how capital moves into and out of businesses.

From there I took the decision to run Consultax full time, and as part of what we now offer, I provide fractional Finance Director services to a select group of clients, so they can draw directly on that experience to take their business to the next level.

That is not a typical accountant's career path, and it is not meant to be. Most accountants qualify, join a practice, and stay inside practice for the rest of their career. I have sat on the other side, inside investment banks and private equity portfolios, doing the kind of valuation, risk and process work that most accountants only read about. You will not find that combination behind most accountants' desks, and it changes the level of conversation I can have with you about your business.

What This Looks Like for Clients

Over the last five years at Consultax, that background has fed directly into the work I do for clients, not just sat in the background as a credential. In practice, that means:

• Due diligence on business acquisitions, run properly rather than as a box ticking exercise
• Structuring acquisitions from a tax and group perspective, so the numbers make sense before the deal completes, not after
• Valuation of businesses, whether you are buying, selling, or trying to understand what you are actually sitting on
• Negotiation support drawn from years of sitting across the table on much larger deals
• FX strategy and hedging, brought across from my time in investment banking
• Cash flow modelling, target acquisition work, and structuring the debt and equity behind a deal, from my time in private equity
• Fractional Finance Director services, drawing on my own time doing this for clients directly
• Using my own network of contacts to connect clients directly to the people they need, which most accountants simply are not positioned to do

The fractional FD work is not something we offer to every client. We currently provide it to a small, selected group, and there is a minimum criteria a business needs to meet before we take it on. It is not a bolt on service, it is a proper commitment of time, so we keep the numbers we work with deliberately small.

That last point matters as much as any of the technical work. A lot of what moves a business forward is not a number on a spreadsheet, it is the right introduction at the right time.

How I Work

I keep things hands on. I do not pass clients down a chain to whoever happens to be free that week. If you call or email, you are talking to me, and I am the one who actually knows your business, your numbers and what you are trying to achieve.

That matters because growth rarely looks the same for any two businesses. I would rather understand what you are actually building toward and shape the advice around that, than hand over a generic compliance service and call it done.