Wilson Partners: inside the £32million Maidenhead firm with a 'bold' vision

When brothers Allan and Chris Wilson founded an accountancy firm in Maidenhead in 2008, they set themselves an ‘Olympic target’.

Wilson Partners had an ambitious goal: £1 million in revenue by the 2012 London Games.

“We shared that target with as many people as would listen, and it was actually quite useful in holding us to account,” Allan told the Advertiser.

Seventeen years on, Wilson Partners has surpassed the 2012 goal. And some.

Wilson Partners managing director Allan Wilson.

 The company’s revenues now top £32million after a four-year string of business purchases, including Maidenhead firm Craufurd Hale and, last month, Midlands-based Max Accountants.

Offices in Cookham Road and Frascati Way have been traded in for the TOR building in St Cloud Way.

There are now more than 300 Wilson Partners employees across eight offices in the UK and South Africa – a near seven-fold increase since 2021.

In the coming years, the company hopes to break into the top 20 UK accountancy firms.

The philosophy behind the push for growth, Allan said, was in part down to advice from his late father Ross.

A successful accountant and co-founder of Windsor-based firm Williams Allan, Ross joined Wilson Partners six months after the company was founded.

“We affectionately refer to him as employee number one,” Allan said.

Ross’ influence was though, much more profound.

Culture is key to Wilson Partners’ success, Allan said, an attitude that stems from his father.

“One of the big things Ross was excellent at was giving his time to… well, clients, but also people within the team,” Allan said, when asked what advice his father had given him. “The words I hear in my head are ‘be bold and be generous’.”

Ross died in 2021, aged 72, but left a legacy championing Thames Valley businesses and charitable organisations, including through work as treasurer of the Prince Philip Trust Fund.

“I often think ‘what would Ross do?’” Allan said, adding, ‘that maybe brings a bit more confidence to a decision’.

While big-business moves are not without their risks, keeping the ‘generous’ culture that has served Wilson Partners throughout its history mitigates dangers.

“We place a lot of importance around culture in the business,” Allan said.

“There’s other people [companies] like us around, some bigger that would just go after any old rubbish – for want of a better word – just to add numbers.

"That’s not what we do.”

For Allan, one of the biggest challenges in maintaining growth was keeping the culture intact while new employees join the ranks.

Wilson Partners now has a more than 300-strong workforce.

“Having a great team that you trust and have confidence in is super important,” he said. “And it makes it a lot easier in terms of managing the growth of the business.”

Risks that are perhaps harder to navigate, are those swelling in the international business currents.

When Wilson Partners purchased Max Accountants, announced last month, the company gained a specialist accountancy firm in tech circles.

When Craufurd Hale came on board, Allan said, it provided ‘another niche across our expanding group’ to work within the United States market.

US President Donald Trump’s sweeping international tariff announcement on Wednesday, that saw a flat 10 per cent levy on UK imports, was the latest upheaveal in global trade.

“Potentially it brings some uncertainty [for us] because Donald trump has talked about changes to their tax regimes – and not taxing non-resident US individuals in the US,” Allan said.

He added: “Whether anything changes who knows, but certainly at the moment [the US] is an area we see quite an opportunity for growth in.”