Services

International Survey Unit

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) International Survey Unit (ISU) is one of the leading international providers of market and attitude research.

Established over 15 years ago, the ISU operates in over 30 countries, ranging from Ireland and the UK, to Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific.

The ISU’s multilingual research team has undertaken some of the most prestigious and provoking international surveys of recent years. From Fortune-500 companies to national governments, PwC’s ISU delivers cutting-edge research on which major investment, policy and economic decisions are made.

ISU research consultants are supported by an extensive, full-time field force of interviewers and a team of international executive researchers. Research capability includes a new, multilingual, outbound contact centre with Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing capability (CATI) and on-line e-survey capabilities.

Tax

As one of the UK’s leading tax planning practices, we are renowned for the depth and quality of our expertise. Recognising that tax is a cost of doing business we offer pro-active, added value tax planning solutions to a wide range of commercial situations. Blending the skills of financial - including pensions and investment planning - and tax specialists with economists, industry experts and dedicated commercial law specialists enables us to enhance that value offering even further.

Economics and Public Policy

PwC’s Northern Ireland Economics and Public Policy group comprises a highly skilled team of economists and policy researchers undertaking economic appraisals, economic research, evaluations of public policies and programmes and economic and strategic analysis. Often working with other PwC teams – including the International Survey Unit (ISU), our economists and researchers have significant sectoral expertise in education, regional and national economic development, health, infrastructure and EU Programmes.

Our economists are frequent media commentators on Northern Ireland, Irish and UK economic performance and prospects.

Assurance & regulatory reporting

Our in-depth understanding of regulation and legislation enables us to help companies with complex reporting requirements, such as Sarbanes Oxley and IFRS. Our extensive experience in internal audit and risk management makes us a preferred advisor amongst a number of leading public and private sector organisations. We are leaders in the development of non-financial reporting, such as the Operating and Financial Review (OFR), to help our clients respond to the drive for better corporate governance.

Our sustainable business solutions team helps clients improve their business performance and long-term shareholder value with a focus on ethical standards.

Public Private Advisory

We advise on and solve the complexities involved in transactions, financing and policy at the interface between the public and private sectors in Northern Ireland; whether it's raising funding for infrastructure projects, building consortia to address specific project or sectoral opportunities or procuring private sector partners for our public sector clients. We work with governments, shaping their policy, developing frameworks and helping them to implement PPPs, industry by industry. As an independent adviser, we engineer a truly competitive bidding process. And when advising private sector bidders, we help them to develop structures that allow them to access local and international funds.

Performance improvement consulting

Helps companies react with agility to opportunities and threats by delivering performance improvements that allow them to gain and protect competitive advantage and government and public sector bodies to improve performance and efficiency and deliver successful and enduring benefits from major change programmes.

Transaction services

PricewaterhouseCoopers Transaction Services helps companies to make acquisitions, divestments and strategic alliances and to access capital. Our services span the entire deal spectrum – from evaluating your acquisition strategy to helping integrate the acquired businesses. Our over-riding objective is always the same: to help you maximise the return on your deal, whether you are the buyer or the seller.

Our due diligence approach analyses and validates the financial, commercial, operational and strategic assumptions underpinning a deal. It uses past trading experience to form a view of the future and investigate if there are any black holes. Individual components of the service include revenue and market due diligence, synergy validation, maintainable earnings, future cash flows and operational issues – as well as deal structuring.

Human resource services

Advises companies on all aspects of people management, helping them create value for their businesses through people. Our consulting team includes experts in recruitment, reward, performance management and organisation design as well as experienced generalist HR professionals. We provide advice to clients on such areas as reviewing and developing executive reward schemes implementing robust performance management schemes to drive results and recognise individual contribution and supporting clients to review their existing organisation structure and manage the workforce implications of any changes. We have particular expertise in recruitment under Northern Ireland quality legislation and in the areas of cross-border/cross-frontier and expatriate recruitment and remuneration planning.

Forensic services

Helps organisations tackle the major financial and reputational risks associated with economic crime. Our forensic experts identify financial irregularities, recover stolen assets and introduce controls to mitigate the future risk of fraud. The team also has a long-established litigation support practice, helping businesses resolve complex financial disputes arising from corporate transactions, insurance claims, intellectual property and licensing contracts, and construction projects.

Corporate finance

Provides a full range of industry-focused financial advisory services to corporates, management teams, private equity houses and public sector institutions. We offer advice throughout the deal spectrum: from strategy and initiation, valuation assessment and supporting value enhancing actions pre-sale, deal execution through to exit planning. Our specialists also advise on a range of transaction types including M&A, private equity, IPOs, project finance and PPP.