Three come up most often. Inventory valuation in inventory-heavy environments, including standard cost reviews, NRV testing and obsolescence provisioning across thousands of SKUs. Revenue recognition across retail multiples, foodservice, export and direct-to-consumer channels, each of which can have different rebate, listing fee and return arrangements. Group consolidations for UK subsidiaries of overseas parents, including reconciliation between local GAAP and parent GAAP. For clients with agricultural or aquaculture operations, biological asset accounting under IAS 41 adds a fourth specialist area on top. None of these are unmanageable. They just need a team that has been here before.

Fee inflation at the Big 4 and Top 10 has been substantial over the past three to five years, while the perceived service level has not always kept pace. Group finance teams are increasingly looking for a UK auditor who can deliver equivalent technical depth at a more proportionate cost, and who is more responsive to the parent's reporting cycle. The conversation rarely stops at audit. It usually extends to tax, transfer pricing and group reporting, all of which the incumbent may have been delivering through separate teams at separate fees.

The merged R\&D Expenditure Credit scheme applies to most companies for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024. Genuine product reformulation, recipe development, shelf-life extension and process innovation work continues to qualify. The credit is delivered at 20% above the line, with most profitable companies seeing a net benefit in the mid-teens after corporation tax. HMRC's scrutiny of food and drink R\&D claims has been heavier than the sector average over the past two years, which means how the work is documented through the year now matters more than how the claim is written up at year-end.

Stock that is not turning at the rate the financial model assumes. Inventory builds quietly in the warehouse, the chiller or the field, and the cash effect tends to show up only when someone runs an inventory days analysis or a fresh provisioning review. The fix is usually a combination of a tighter view on slow-moving lines, more disciplined obsolescence provisioning, and a closer link between demand planning and procurement. The receivables side matters too, particularly where retail multiples and foodservice customers have extended their payment terms in recent years.

The broad shape: target evaluation, approach and indicative offer, financial and operational due diligence, tax and structuring work, contract negotiation, completion, then integration. For a cross-border deal, the structuring piece is heavier than for a domestic transaction (withholding taxes, financing structure, interaction with the existing group). The integration piece is also harder, particularly where the target's reporting, costing and inventory systems differ from the UK group's. Ballards' role covers the financial DD, the tax structuring and the post-deal integration of the finance function. The lawyers run the contract piece. The bank or fund handles the funding.

With a defensible policy and consistent application. A line-by-line review across thousands of SKUs is rarely practical, so most businesses set provisioning rules based on stock turn, ageing and channel. The risk is that the policy gets set once, applied mechanically, and gradually drifts out of line with how the products are actually selling. We tend to recommend a structured review at least annually, with the underlying policy revisited every two to three years against the changing shape of the portfolio. Auditors will look hard at this. So will buyers in a transaction.

The transfer price between group entities needs to reflect what an independent party would pay for the same product on the same terms. For physical product flows (raw materials, semi-finished or finished goods moving between group factories or distribution entities), the most common method is cost-plus or a comparable uncontrolled price approach, supported by documentation that justifies the choice. Tax authorities in the UK and the relevant overseas jurisdictions have become noticeably more active on transfer pricing, and documentation that was acceptable five years ago is often no longer sufficient. The work is rarely as complex as it first appears, but it does need doing properly and revisiting regularly.

Preparation is most of it. The transaction phase itself (vendor DD, buyer outreach, indicative offers, full DD, contracts, completion) usually takes between six and twelve months. The preparation that makes that phase go well typically takes two to three years. In food and drink specifically, what buyers scrutinise hardest tends to be customer concentration (particularly exposure to retail multiples and their payment terms), brand strength, NPD pipeline and the technical IP behind product formulations. Cleaning the MI, normalising one-off items and making the underlying performance properly visible to a buyer all sit in the preparation period.