Quintessentially on hunt for new auditor as BDO set to resign

Quintessentially, the concierge company founded by UK Conservative party co-chair Ben Elliot, is searching for its third auditor in three years after a breakdown in relations with BDO.

The change would be the latest accounting upheaval at the “exclusive lifestyle management” company, which last year disclosed that it had previously made errors of more than £7mn in its accounts and paid £1.4mn of unlawful dividends to its shareholders.

BDO has resigned as auditor of Quintessentially Travel, according to the Companies House website. The accounting firm, the UK’s fifth-largest by revenue, is also set to resign as auditor of the wider Quintessentially group, said people with knowledge of the matter.

Its impending exit follows long delays in the filing of Quintessentially’s accounts and concerns about governance, which one person with knowledge of the matter said BDO had raised repeatedly with the company’s management.

Auditors also raised concerns “time after time” that the group lacked the “finance team and financial infrastructure” needed to prepare and file its accounts on time, the person said, adding that Quintessentially’s governance was “not up to scratch”.

Quintessentially said there were “no outstanding issues with the current finance team or indeed its governance following the earlier company restructuring and subsequent management changes of last year”.

BDO’s departure is unusually quick. It only took over the audit of Quintessentially in 2019 after PwC signed off the 2018 accounts. The accounting errors and unlawful dividends were first disclosed in the 2019 accounts, which were audited by BDO and filed in May 2021.

London-based Quintessentially has operated for more than two decades, helping its wealthy clients with everything from a personal assistant service to securing places at prestigious schools. It has arranged invitations to No 10 Downing Street and events with members of the royal family.

Quintessentially group has not yet filed its accounts for the year to April 30 2020, which were due by April 2021. BDO is expected to remain in place until the next set of accounts has been signed off, the people said. The accounts for the year to April 2021 are also overdue.

The 2019 accounts reported losses of £4.4mn on revenues of £50mn, and BDO warned at the time that the group faced a “material uncertainty” over its ability to continue operating. Quintessentially blamed the 15-month delay in filing its 2019 accounts on a restructuring of its 30 subsidiary companies into its main business.

Work on the 2020 accounts was now complete but auditors had yet to sign them off, which had been a source of frustration at the company, said one person familiar with the matter.

Quintessentially said the 2020 accounts “are expected to be filed very shortly”. “The audit for 2021 will commence immediately [once] the 2020 accounts are filed,” it said, adding that unaudited management accounts indicated that it would report “record” results for 2022.

The accounts of Quintessentially Travel, which publishes its financial statements separately from the rest of the group, are up to date. The holiday and corporate travel provider reported a 78 per cent slump in revenues to £5.4mn in the year to April 2021, which it blamed on the impact of Covid-19.

The change of auditor at Quintessentially Travel “was entirely driven by the Quintessentially Group not BDO”, Quintessentially said. “The group simply wanted to appoint travel specialists to this part of the group.”

It declined to say which firm had been chosen to carry out the audit after BDO’s resignation.

A process to sell the company has been running for several months but is not close to a conclusion, said a person briefed on the matter.

BDO declined to comment.