Tom Herbert opens the podcast by looking at accounting firm consolidators and the difficulty of integrating acquired practices. Following news that the sale of Xeinadin has collapsed after its private equity owners failed to land a £1bn-plus price tag, he explores Xeinadin’s background and the challenges of knitting together different tech stacks, workflows and data. Drawing on his conversation with M&A specialist David Boyd, he asks whether AI can genuinely speed up this change or whether old mistakes are being repeated.

In other news, it was announced that the timeline for small companies and micro entities to file their profit and loss (P&L) accounts with Companies House has been paused following stakeholder concerns. Richard Hattersley outlines what happened and whether this was expected. He reveals that many have welcomed the delay with 2027 already shaping up to be a busy year.

And lastly, Matthew Ord shares his chat with Bob Horgan, FD at Central Technology who believes there’s a push towards AI and automation to cut costs and free finance for more strategic work. The team questions whether these organisations have the culture, data quality and system fit to turn that promise into real value.