WOW! What a year 2023 was. It feels like it is in the rearview mirror now, especially with how packed 2024 has been already! We wanted to share a few snippets of Fusion’s journey from last year, from business acquisitions to fancy dress, love poems to trophy presentations and more…
NEW SERVICES AND AWARDS
2023 heralded some exciting new services that Fusion offers to our clients. The biggest of them all was adding an entirely new service line to our 360 degree offering – Fusion Recruitment. This was a longstanding aim of Mitch and Adam’s, and we couldn’t be prouder of the impact it has made to us and our clients thus far. The other two main offerings are Chief Financial Officer as a Service – otherwise known as CFOaaS or CFO as a Service – run by our Head of Recruitment, Adam Bloch, which we are very proud of, having already built a stable of businesses that are now benefiting.
The second service is our U.S. Tax Division, headed up by our whiz kid Henry Smith-Langridge, who has an intimate knowledge of all things tax on both sides of the pond. We are proud to be an international company, with offices in South Africa (and Surrey…does that count?) amongst others, so expanding our services abroad is the next natural move.
As for awards, externally, we are proud to have been recognised in both Tax and Law. Our Director Mitch Young was recognised in the revered Spears Index as one of the top Tax Advisers in the UK, whilst our Head of Law Alex Jarosz was voted the Most Influential Commercial Lawyer in London at the Influential Businesswomen Awards. Internally, we had our Employee of the Year (EOY) Awards with the following winners:-
Directors EOY – Henry Smith-Langridge
London EOY – Ana Caraiman
Hatfield EOY – Beverley Rogers
Surrey EOY – Sam Wheeler
Manager of the Year – Annabel Swaleh
Congratulations to all of our winners!
EVENTS
We hosted, and partook in a number of great events. Our marquee event of the year was our 8 year Anniversary Party at Home House. We went all out and celebrated with some great people, from long standing clients, to staff, to our nearest and dearest. Our annual Christmas bash was…memorable, and for some, well, hard to remember! We attended a Hollywood themed event in town and good times were had.
Externally, we presented at a number of events, including the famous MIPIM in Cannes, an annual Tax conference in Geneva, as well as visiting Pall Mall Investments, PCD Next Gen Event and taking part in a fantastic charity 5-a-side football tournament – we claimed more injuries than trophies, but it was a great team bonding day and even better to raise money for Camp Simcha charity.
ACQUISITIONS AND HIRES
We had a seismic year, acquiring 5 new businesses in our buy and build program. We are proud to now have offices in Hatfield and Surrey. Along with an extensive hiring program, led by our talent acquisition manager Amy, not only have we increased our staff numbers close to 100, we now also regularly run out of mugs in the office…thankfully we managed to find space in the budget for an extra set!
With this expansion, we doubled our office space at HQ and now have a fantastic breakout room with a top of the range coffee machine, a pool table, comfy couches and a fully stocked kitchen with snacks and amenities – at least until Thursday when it is usually picked clean! In all seriousness though, it was a ground-breaking year for us, and we aim to continue this growth in 2024 with even bigger and bolder objectives. Stay tuned.
THEMED DAYS
Here at Fusion, we love any chance to embrace an occasion to dress up, bring in/order good food, have some friendly competitions and generally spread the love. Some of the highlights – pictured below – included Halloween, Secret Santa, International Women’s Day, International Cuisine Day, Valentine’s Day and the first incarnation of our Pool Tournament! It’s fair to say the latter got almost as tasty as the food on Cuisine Day, but ultimately it was all in good spirit, and we’re looking forward to the next comp. PS, our marketing manager Gideon was the champion, but we don’t want it going to his head!
Between countless inspiring historic women, 5 love poems, 4 ‘homemade’ cuisine dishes, 3 Siamese cats, intimate knowledge of 2 international pool rule codes and 1 simply brilliant crochet cushion with James’ doppelganger (don’t ask…), we had a blast in the office.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us in 2023, be it client, employee, friend or family. We appreciate all of you and are inspired to keep pushing the boundaries in 2024, with more services, more events (keep your eyes peeled for the return of Fusion’s Charity Football Tournament), more office themed days and most of all, more speciality crochet cushions!
