Big oil companies such as BP and Shell are offering top dollars for professional services as the North Sea oil is reaching record prices, pricing some local accountancy firms out of the market.

The bigger accountancy practices are offering £40,000 to newly qualified accountants to counter the salaries and packages on offer from the oil companies who can offer high base salaries together with lucrative benefits packages including share options, The Scotsman reports.

‘With oil pushing towards $100 a barrel, activity in Aberdeen and its industrial hinterland is reaching levels not seen since the boom days of the seventies,' Nicky MacLeod, PRG head of professional services, said. ‘We are being instructed to source candidates for particularly well-rewarded positions. ’

He said all the Big Four accounting firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young and Deloitte, which have offices in the city, were in a position to offer ‘the right candidates quite remarkable salary and benefits packages’, often including very lucrative results-driven equity option incentives and being able to source the required quality of candidate from an ever-shrinking pool of talent.

Further reading:

London businesses look overseas to fill skills gap

Read the story in The Scotsman