BrazilBDO France consolidates Paris offices into new French headquarters
BDO France has moved into its new headquarters in Paris. The new office, which consolidates a number of other offices, is designed to provide a better working environment for its accountants, advisors, consultants, and clients.
The new office in Paris, which is located at 43-47 avenue de la Grande-Armée, reflects the firm’s growing presence in the French professional services market. The global network only set up shop in the country ten years ago, and has rapidly expanded to become the fifth largest professional services firm. Today, BDO France has over 1,200 professionals – in comparison, BDO Italy has around 700 staff, BDO Austria has a headcount of over 550, while BDO Switzerland – one of the firm’s strongest country organisations in Europe (vis a vis local competition) – boasts a team of around 950 employees across 30+ offices.
The new headquarters merges several of BDO’s former offices in Paris, serving its clients and wider offices in France, which now tally 40 (in France and its territories), as well as supports the work of its 1,200 employees – 60% of whom are women.
One major feature of the new office BDO is proud to highlight is the availability of a new 1,000 m2 space designed to increase the collaboration between its key divisions – audit, accounting, consulting and tax. To facilitate joint teams, the new space has an integrated co-working environment, developed in partnership with French co-working space expert StartWay. The space is so designed to ‘encourage exchanges’ within and between the different business divisions.
The move reflects a growing trend with professional services. As the frontiers of accounting and advisory/consulting are interweaving, and new forms of blended services on the rise (design, technology, etc), cooperation between the different arms is becoming an increasing success factor for companies such as BDO. The Big Four, in France and beyond, commonly have major collaboration spaces in their offices, while the likes of the strategy consultants are also busy with developing design centres or technology hubs within their premises. BCG for instance in 2016 launched an Operations Innovation Center in Paris to showcase its Industry 4.0 offerings, meanwhile Accenture too established a brand-new Innovation Centre in the French capital city.
Aside from its design around collaboration, BDO’s new headquarters offers a wide range of amenities, including a large cafeteria, a relaxation area, a fitness room and a wide variety of space to work and collaborate. In addition, the office leverages a variety of tools for ergonomics, efficiency and energy savings.
BDO France is led by Phillippe Arraou, Chairman of the Executive Board. He recently succeeded Michel Léger, who now is Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
Earlier this year, global consultancy FTI Consulting bolstered its forensics footprint in Paris with the addition of five experts from rival Kroll.
