A company which claims to be one of our ‘best kept secrets’ is rebranding with a promise that it wants to help boost business for the island. Browne Craine & Co (Isle of Man) is a thriving firm of chartered accountants with global and local business interests.
Picturesque Burleigh Manor could be in the middle of the countryside but is tucked away up a tree-lined drive just yards from the traffic of Peel Road, Douglas.
Sitting in the boardroom of Burleigh Manor, managing director Basil Bielich told Business News how:
- the company has never really advertised itself relying more on referrals
- he and his colleagues are firm believers in Isle of Man plc
- the firm is rebranding after just taking on four new partners and a marketing manager to boost the compay’s firepower
Father of two Mr Bielich, 52, also told of his love for the Isle of Man and revealed how he used to have the Examiner newspaper shipped across to his native South Africa years before he finally moved over here with his family.
The paper was a broadsheet in those days and Mr Bielich said he read the paper from cover to cover.
He hit the headlines in 2005, when he and three other intrepid golfers set up a Guinness World record when they played golf in six continents in six days. The global Golf Challenge involved more than 30,000 miles of air travel and games of golf in Egypt, Singapore, Sydney, Santiago and Miami before finishing at Castletown Golf Links.
Ramsey Golf Club member Mr Bielich told Business News he has harboured dreams of one day taking part in an ‘islands of the world’ golfing exercise.
Browne Craine & Co is committed to the island, said Mr Bielich. ‘When I joined [in 1997] we had about 12 employees and now we have 28 staff. ‘We do local work and we do offshore work as well’. The business includes a sister company called Peregrine Corporate Services. ‘We’ve never really done a lot of advertising, all of our business comes through referral work.
‘In some ways we are the best kept secret here.’
Browne Craine does a lot of auditing work with large companies as well as tax work.
Four new partners joined the board recently. They are Lynsey Smith, James Sayle, Jamie McKenna and Stuart Foster.
‘We do a lot of accounting for local firms.’
‘One of the big things with our staff is that we encourage them to get accounting qualifications. We will finance this and we give them time off to do this.’
The company has come to ‘embrace’ FATCA regulations, he said.
‘It’s bringing in good quality business for us and I think it’s quite a positive thing.
‘At the end of the day it is helping the island in the long run.’
