SMP cooperating with universities

Established in 1995, Moscow-based Nexia Pacioli has grown to employ about 200 people covering audit, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), valuation, consulting, legal services, tariff expertise, financial outsourcing, and training. It has over 500 clients in various sectors, primarily large state-owned corporations, but also international clients from the membership of the Nexia International network.

The company was founded by a group of alumni of Moscow State University and keeps close ties with the alma mater. Nexia Pacioli established a scholarship of excellence named after Luca Pacioli[1] for Moscow State University students, which attracts a large number of applicants every year, encourages excellence among students and ‘creates a pool of young professionals for the local market’, says Svetlana Romanova, CEO and managing partner of Nexia Pacioli.

Furthermore, the company is a founder of the ‘Pacioli University’, a two-week in-house intensive professional training programme open to final-year university students who are willing to pursue practical knowledge about accountancy and the audit profession. The programme is currently mainly attracting finance and economics students, but the ambition is to involve more IT students in the future. During the programme, participants get hands-on training led by the top experts of Nexia Pacioli, work on concrete case studies and have a chance of getting ‘the flavour of real work’.

‘At the end of the training programme, the students are asked to complete a test and a number of successful candidates are offered employment in the company’, says Romanova.

‘We're trying to find candidates with potential, experience is not of ultimate importance for us’, says Svetlana.

Nexia Pacioli has a strong focus on sustainability reporting, as pending legislation in Russia will oblige many companies to prepare for non-financial reporting. To support the development of value-added services, the company is now investing in software and automation to reduce the technical workload and free employees’ time for analysis and advisory work. Both sustainability accounting and the possibility of working on advisory tasks are seen as very attractive by Nexia Pacioli employees.

‘As a medium-sized firm, Pacioli can offer a greater breadth of on-the-job experience than a big company usually does; we are ready to adjust to client needs, which helps our staff to develop skills in multiple disciplines and makes them highly employable.

‘Furthermore, our international network creates professional ties and learning opportunities with staff from other countries’, says Svetlana Romanova.

Romanova emphasises that, apart from the professional development opportunities, the positive working environment and broader social mission of the company matter a lot for her employees and have a growing importance for both attracting and retaining staff. It is equally important for employees to work in a team of like-minded, motivated and driven professionals.

The firm is supporting various charity causes, providing regular pro bono consultancy services and financial support to a number of charity organisations based in Russia. In addition to that, Nexia Pacioli is an advocate of the protection of cultural heritage, and a strong supporter of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.