Grant Thornton redeployment limits jobs cull

Scott Barnes, GT's new chief executive

Grant Thornton had announced 220 jobs would go but only 160 lost their positions out of a UK staff of 4,000.

Scott Barnes was speaking to Accountancy Age TV when he revealed that GT would be keeping more staff by moving them to growth areas such as corporate recovery and forensic accounting.

‘The numbers in the end were far less than covered in the press because we were able to redeploy people into corporate recovery,’ he said.

The redundancies occurred in December.

Barnes, who took over running GT in January, is still working on his business plan and new management team. He said he expects to compete with the Big Four, but not in all areas and will be working to ensure that GT knows exactly what its market focus should be.

Barnes is a former UK head of corporate recovery for GT but was most recently global head of specialist financial services.

Visit Accountancy Age TV here. Barnes' interview will be available to watch later today.