Polyvalence to counter the crisis

At a time when accounting norms and different tax legislations are evolving rapidly, when company restructuring is multiplying and when, as a result, human resource management is extremely delicate, companies are on the lookout for companies that can help them in all these domains simultaneously.
It is thanks to its multidisciplinary character that BDO Compagnie Fiduciaire has become one of the most important establishments in financial engineering and service provision. A company based in Luxembourg, BDO exercises five professions corresponding to five departments: domiciliation and company management / financial engineering, auditing, human resources administration, accountancy and tax advice for legal entities and natural persons. “Our polyvalent approach allows us to support companies throughout all events marking their existence,” explains Marc Thill, Company Auditor and Chartered Accountant who joined BDO in 1989. Results seem conclusive: in 2008, despite the crisis, BDO achieved a turnover of 35.2 million euros with 8% growth compared with 2007, and increased its staff by 10%, bringing figures up to 284 employees. Since 2000, BDO Compagnie Fiduciaire has been part of the number five world network, BDO International, whose turnover rose, in 2008, to 3.6 billion euros (+ 11% compared with 2007), with a 6% rise in staff, in other 33,437 employees spread out in 671 offices and present in 110 countries.
“BDO was founded in 1950, and we take advantage of solid experience and an excellent knowledge of the Luxembourg economic world,” specifies Claude Zimmer, a chartered accountant and today Head of the Human Resources and Tax Resources Departments. This expertise explains the company’s attractiveness for its loyal and highly diverse clientele of SMEs/SMIs from all sectors (financial services, service providers, mass retailing, real estate, industry, financial engineering…) and mainly European countries (Belgium, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, United Kingdom…). “Our clients feel the effects of the crisis in all domains. So they need us more than ever and ask us to make efforts from a financial point of view. We are seeking to adopt a proactive attitude in regard to them, to help them to get by,” states Marc Thill.
BDO has a trump card it can play at the moment: thanks to highly competitive rates, it attracts more and more multinationals that until now have only been dealing with the sector’s top four networks. “Our mode of functioning pleads in our favour and we will continue to invest massively this year in staff training, new techniques and new accounting norms,” enthuses Claude Zimmer. As employment law was finally harmonised in Luxembourg on 1 January this year, the BDO Salaries service will benefit from a new software solution for calculating salaries, baptised “Pay Ease” and developed by Datagest, the computing stream of BDO. “This will allow us to extend our field of activities towards the industrial and commercial sectors,” notes Marc Thill. The company is also developing an electronic archiving system and putting in place an intranet that will allow documentary resources to be shared more efficiently.
Moreover, BDO has reinforced its client services by the creation of CF Fund Services, a company recognised in December as a service provider for structures under surveillance by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF). With CF Fund Services, the group will be able to develop its activities in register keeping, company domiciliation, client communications, financial administration and company creation and management services.
The project to transpose the 8th European Directive on legal annual monitoring of accounts to Luxembourg law has inspired a few ideas to BDO Compagnie Fiduciaire. The company has undertaken a restructuring process, which will ultimately result in the creation of a new entity exclusively dedicated to the exercise of company
auditing, recognised by the CSSF.