Matthew Hutton, Siobhan Hennessy and Rhyan Stephens have been admitted to McGrathNicol’s Partnership. The appointments bring the firm’s total Partner count to 37.

Matthew Hutton is a highly regarded turnaround, restructuring and insolvency specialist, who has worked at McGrathNicol for more than 12 years. He works closely with lawyers, lenders, private equity principals, directors, and senior executives to assist businesses in navigating challenging periods. Matthew specialises in advising and supporting mid-market businesses within the construction, property, manufacturing, industrial and retail sectors.

Siobhan Hennessy is a Forensic expert with over 20 years’ experience in dispute resolution, forensic investigations, regulatory response and labour force reviews. Siobhan specialises in investigating allegations of misconduct, quantification of damages and preparation of evidence for dispute-resolution forums. She joins McGrathNicol from PwC, where she was a Partner.

Rhyan Stephens is a turnaround and operations specialist with more than 20 years’ experience managing large-scale supply chains and industrial businesses in Australia and overseas. He specialises in optimising operations and brings an extensive background in strategic transformation, commercial growth, governance and compliance, mergers and acquisitions, and merger integration.

Commenting on the appointments, McGrathNicol Chairman, Jason Preston, said: “Each of these new Partners embodies the values and principles of our firm. We look forward to the contribution they will make to McGrathNicol as highly-skilled specialists.

“The appointments also demonstrate our continued investment in talent as we head into what we expect to be a busy and varied portfolio of assignments in 2021.”

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Mr Arthur’s appointment brings the total number of Partners in the McGrathNicol Advisory team to 23 and the total Partner count to 36 across the firm.

Mr Arthur has over 15 years’ experience working with businesses looking to drive strategic change. He has held multiple executive roles in strategy and finance within Australia and throughout Europe and played a critical role in influencing the strategic and operational direction of businesses in industries including telecommunications, energy, infrastructure, financial services and healthcare.

Commenting on the promotion, McGrathNicol Managing Partner Jamie Harris said: “We are delighted to have a professional of Rob’s calibre join the partnership. Rob has an excellent track record in strategy and brings a valuable skillset. We look forward to his contribution to the growing team.”

Mr Arthur has implemented performance improvements of more than $1 billion through strategic, operational and commercial initiatives and adopted a range of innovative methods to improve financial outcomes by more than 50%.

The McGrathNicol Strategy and Business Improvement team assists organisations of all sizes at various stages of their business lifecycle. They work with a sense of urgency to understand and analyse complex issues, identify opportunities and help make change happen.

Commenting on his new role, Mr Arthur said “I’m excited to join such an experienced team to deliver measurable and sustainable improvements to businesses, linking strategy to action.”

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Michelle Price

McGrathNicol has announced the launch of FDetect, a new technology-enabled forensic investigations and risk profiling service developed in collaboration with leading technology and analytics startup, ResponSight. 

A study conducted by the Ponemon Institute reports that it takes an average of 281 days to identify and contain a cyber breach in Australia, with the average cost of each incident being AU$3 million. According to AustCyber’s Cyber Security Sector Competitiveness Plan, there is also a shortage of cyber security professionals, with 2,600 vacancies in the field currently unfilled, and an anticipated 16,600 additional workers required by 2026. 

Seeing an opportunity to assist businesses address this issue, in July last year McGrathNicol engaged ResponSight to collaborate on a solution to give businesses early warnings into the human element of cybercrime and other key business risks.

ResponSight was awarded a $250,000 grant from the AustCyber Projects Fund to develop the service, which is to be delivered in partnership with McGrathNicol. 

About FDetect

FDetect is a managed service providing early warning and risk insights based on an understanding of human behaviours and their use of technology. The intuitive technology features inbuilt mechanisms that will allow businesses to quickly investigate potential risks.

The service is backed by McGrathNicol’s industry-leading forensic response team and draws on McGrathNicol’s deep capability in risk management, investigations, digital forensics and cybersecurity. 

Key features of FDetect include:

• Early insights into human risks: Analyses patterns of behaviour from multiple sources at each device on an organisation’s network to form a risk-based view of what is unexpected or alarming. A team of experienced investigators and analysts monitor and tune the service for the organisation and help them respond rapidly to elevated risk events.
• Evidence preservation: Collects evidence in real-time and ensures no loss of evidence regardless of time elapsed between an event occurring and being detected
• AI driven anomaly detection: Employs state-of-the-art behavioural analytics to provide organisations with a risk-based analysis of human and machine behaviours that are unexpected and potentially risky – reducing the probability of significant financial or reputational impact.

Darren Hopkins, Partner at McGrathNicol Advisory said: “We are delighted to have partnered with a leading startup to create an innovative service like no other in this market. The service provides Australian businesses with a combination of technology-enabled behavioral analytics and the backing of human forensic experts with decades of experience investigating intellectual property theft, white collar crime and cybercrime. 

“It is also incredibly exciting to have the support of AustCyber, who are charged with growing Australia’s cyber security industry, in solving a significant problem for Australian organisations, with a solution that detect corporate misconduct and cyber threats, helps contain threats and assists forensic investigations where needed.”

Michelle Price, CEO of AustCyber said: “We know the growing demand for cyber security products and services is a significant economic opportunity for Australia – it’s how we respond as a nation to this opportunity that will drive sustained growth and better management of risk. Supporting cyber resiliency across the Australian economy improves our nation’s overall global competitiveness, as well as its security.

“AustCyber is excited to be working with McGrathNicol and ResponSight as they develop a system for forensic data collection, investigations and early warning risk analytics based on behavioural activity profiling over the next 12 months. I anticipate the outcomes of the project will have national, if not international, reach and impact.”

The service is currently being trialed by a few large enterprises with funding from AustCyber to be put towards continued enhancements and ongoing service innovation.

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Chris is a transactions expert providing M&A integration and earnings improvement assistance. He has worked with some of Australia’s leading corporates, including assisting Energy Australia with the integration of the acquisition of a major NSW energy retailer and generator, McMillan Shakespeare Limited in respect of its financial due diligence assessment of the potential merger with Eclipx Group Limited and Medibank ahead of its initial public offering.

Chris’ promotion is the latest for the Advisory practice following senior Forensic hires earlier this year, including Matthew Ashby, Wynand Mullins and Blare Sutton.

Commenting on the promotion, McGrathNicol Managing Partner Jamie Harris said: “Chris has been with McGrathNicol Advisory for more than a decade, rising through the ranks of the firm from Manager when he first joined to a Partner today. We are delighted to recognise his impressive track record of delivering for our clients, the Transactions team and the firm, which is underpinned by the firm’s values and principles.

“Chris’ promotion reflects our confidence in his leadership skills and his ability to contribute to the team at a strategic level. I believe his achievement will be an inspiration for the next generation of young talent at McGrathNicol Advisory.”

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