Supporting indigenous SMEs to make a meaningful impact for their customers and communities

Despite sustained interest rate and inflation headwinds, indigenous SMEs have continued to invest and create significant value for their customers and communities across Ireland. Our multidisciplinary teams support them at every step of their journey, so they can deliver the most meaningful impact possible for their businesses.

Privately owned businesses are the engine room of the Irish and global economy. Over the last 12 months, the external landscape has presented colossal challenges – an atrocious war in Europe, rising geopolitical tensions, record inflation, an energy crisis, tumultuous global financial markets, and raging wildfires and droughts because of the climate crisis. However, indigenous businesses continue to be the lifeblood of our local economy.

As these businesses grapple with the external environment, our team of specialist experts continue to support them tackle these challenges at every stage of their life cycle. From financing and scaling, to navigating tax incentives and compliance obligations, Deloitte Private brings the breadth and depth of the firm’s services to entrepreneurs, families, businesses and their private shareholders.

Our Financial Advisory teams support businesses in their investment decision-making, including our Transaction and Real Estate Advisory teams which advise our clients throughout the journey to source finance and growth investment. This impacts critical areas for them and communities across Ireland, for example, sourcing finance for residential housing development and sourcing growth investment for children’s care facilities in our local communities, and many other important sectors.

Over the course of the year our teams supported clients to raise in excess of €4.2 billion in growth finance and investment, creating meaningful value for their businesses. This support spans businesses of all sizes and across industries including consumer, energy, construction, manufacturing, life sciences, technology and financial services.

As businesses scale and mature, our Audit & Assurance team support these businesses embed robust processes to meet compliance and reporting obligations.

Conversely, some SMEs are unable to make their desired impact due to rising interest rates and inflation. These clients get our support and advice on how to repoint their businesses to create a sustainable platform for growth. Our Turnaround and Restructuring team embed themselves in our clients’ businesses, understanding their issues and supporting them to reposition for the future.

Family Business Network

Deloitte has built a formidable partnership with the Family Business Network. Through this alliance we deliver our insights and market intelligence on topics of interest to our family-owned business clients. At intimate, relaxed roundtable events we discuss a broad range of topics including succession planning, corporate governance, and industry trends. We’ve shared timely insights such as optimising staff working arrangements post-COVID. Events are delivered by Deloitte industry experts with an audience of leading domestic businesses from across Ireland.

Advocating for better policies

Deloitte’s tax team is always supportive of scaling businesses from a tax policy perspective. We regularly respond to public consultations issued by the Department of Finance and the Commission on Taxation and Welfare on various pertinent issues. This includes responses on improving existing legislation such as the Employment Investment Incentive Scheme (EIIS), Entrepreneur relief, and Capital Gains Tax. Our recent pre-budget submission highlighted the need to reform the SME tax system. There is a need to better facilitate start-ups and indigenous business and incentivise entrepreneurs to remain in market and scale their businesses. 

We also work closely with Scale Ireland, an independent not-for-profit organisation, that supports, represents, and advocates on behalf of Irish tech start-up and scale-up companies. Our tax policy partner sits on Scale Ireland’s steering group advising on key issues and draft submissions. 

Awards programmes

Our awards programmes, Ireland’s Best Managed Companies (BMC) and the Technology Fast 50 Awards, celebrate indigenous business success. Both involve teams from across our business working collaboratively, providing Irish owned companies with industry recognition and networking opportunities. Participating companies receive numerous supports and coaching from Deloitte and our partners.

BMC 2022 key highlights:

113 BMC Coaches gave personalised sessions to entrants (61 advisors from Deloitte and 52 from programme sponsor Bank of Ireland)
Combined turnover of €13.9 billion for the BMC network
Generating 51,000 jobs across the island of Ireland
136 companies received Best Managed Company designation

Fast 50 2022 key highlights:

Fast 50 winners generated approximately €500m in total annual revenues and employed over 5,500 people
The average growth rate of the companies over four years was 594%