Individuality is in our bloodstream – we recognise it in our clients, and foster it in our own people. This creates a climate where innovation and bespoke solutions become the norm.

As a service business, we depend on talent. We aim to attract people who are the best into the business. We also recognise that, without a stimulating environment, they will not stay. And unless they are motivated they will not do their best.

Which is why we invest significant resources into creating and sustaining a supportive working environment. We now consistently feature in leading surveys as one of the UK's best workplaces – and successfully attract partners and other senior people from Big Four and other firms.

Over the last year we've been especially successful at attracting people with expertise in our core sectors. We strengthened our Real Estate and Construction team by recruiting a specialist construction partner with excellent sector credentials. Our Manufacturing team now has more than 50 partners and managers. This year we strengthened our automotive sector team with internationally recognised specialists and won major projects for BMW, Volkswagen Group, Skoda and Audi.

We have also deepened our Financial Services sector expertise and brought insurance specialists into the business. This investment was rapidly rewarded with several notable successes, including providing regulatory consultancy services to a subsidiary of one of the world's largest insurance groups.

Both the quality of BDO Stoy Hayward people and our commitment to developing our people is reflected in our tax graduates' ATT results. For the second consecutive year our tax staff achieved a 100 per cent pass rate in the May exams.

Our talented people unite to create award winning teams. In 2007 we won a number of awards. Investment Management's flagship fund – a top quartile performer, ever since 1995 – was Real Adviser's Best Balanced Growth Multimanager Fund for the second year running. At the 2007 LexisNexis Butterworths Taxation Awards we were voted Best Tax Investigations Team. We were Growth Company Investor's AIM Accountant of the Year, M&A Magazine's M&A Accountancy Firm of the Year and we won Acquisitions Monthly's AIM M&A Deal of the Year award.

To find out more about how we attract, develop and retain the most talented people in the industry, please go to the 'Our people' section.