Former MD of Kroll joins Azets in Manchester
Azets’ business recovery and insolvency service has appointed the former managing director of a major financial and risk advisory firm.
Working out of the Manchester office, Dave Riley joins from Kroll as a partner at Azets, the UK top 10 accountancy and business advisory firm.
Louise Brittain and Matthew Richards, Joint UK heads of restructuring and insolvency, said: “Dave is a highly respected practitioner in his field and will help us with businesses in the North West and further afield that face numerous financial challenges.”
The team at Azets assist lenders, creditors, corporates and individuals to find the right restructuring or insolvency solution.
Dave will be working with the firm’s wider restructuring and insolvency team, including Leeds-based partners Jonathan Amor and Richard Oddy who cover Yorkshire and The Humber and the North East.
With many years’ experience in the lender market and insolvency, his focus is asset based lending and advisory/restructuring.
Dave said: “There are companies large and small which are financially unravelling in what continues to be a severely testing climate for so many businesses – my colleagues and I at Azets are on hand to advise directors and stakeholders on how to address, amongst a range of pressing issues, trading underperformance and pressure on working capital.
“Corporate insolvencies are being driven by a range of current issues, including rising labour costs caused by the increases in employer taxes and the national minimum wage, with profitability further undermined by business rates bills, sticky inflation, high energy prices, delayed spending decisions by clients due to uncertainty in the run up to late November’s Budget and a lack of consumer confidence due to the cost of living.
“Creditor pressure and management fatigue are also taking a toll – many companies tightened their belts to weather the pandemic, itself the worse hit to the UK economy since the Second World War, along with dealing with the 41-year inflation high of 11.1% in October 2022, only to be poleaxed by the cost-of-living crisis and the two latest Budgets.”
Reflecting those challenges, 54 retailers shuttered last year in the UK, with the loss of more than 3,000 stores and 30,000 employees, based on figures by the Centre for Retail Research.
Citing cost pressures, the industry trade body British Beer and Pub Association reported that the pub sector was affected by an average of one pub a day calling last orders for the final time in 2025 in England, Wales and Scotland, and the hospitality industry shed 89,000 jobs in the first nine months of last year, according to UK Hospitality.
Figures also show that housebuilding in the construction sector has plummeted to levels not seen since the pandemic in May 2020 and that the wider construction sector suffered its 12th consecutive month of contraction – the longest negative run since the financial crash of 2007-09.
Azets, responding to latest insolvency figures by the government, stated: “It’s highly likely that the total for 2025 will see higher numbers than 2024, and that insolvencies will increase in 2026.“
The unemployment rate is 5.1%, with 1.83m people aged 16-plus out of work, and payrolled employees fell by 184,000 over last year, based on PAYE real-time information from HMRC.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of vacancies in the UK was 734,000, down from the peak of nearly 1.3m in March to May 2022; in the first part of the pandemic of 2020, vacancies were 328,000.
“Against this tough backdrop, there are many businesses edging towards a cliff edge – but practical, timely advice by experts can make all the difference,” Dave said.