Phil Crooks is a Chartered Accountant with over forty years of experience in accounting, auditing, and investigations.
During the last ten years, he has acted as an advisory and testifying expert in connection with litigation, arbitration, and regulatory matters. He was an audit partner until 2019 and has acted as an expert on a range of forensic accounting matters, including professional negligence.
Mr. Crooks was a partner in a large accounting firm for over twenty years. He was UK head of audit and had responsibilities including setting the strategy and overseeing audit quality for the firm. He gained extensive experience of quality review programs, internal investigations, and liaising with regulators. He has specialised in forensic work since 2012 while maintaining his involvement in audit and his Responsible Individual status until 2019.
Before that, Mr. Crooks was in audit at a Big Four firm for fifteen years. Prior to that, his earlier career included accounts preparation, providing insight into how accounts are put together, knowledge that he has applied in investigations, due diligence, and other forensic work.
Mr. Crooks’ more than forty years of audit experience has taken place across a range of sectors and businesses of varying size and complexity. He has audited UK businesses with overseas operations, as well as UK subsidiaries of US and other overseas parents. This has included family businesses, private-equity backed, and plc entities. The sectors have included construction, education, retail, manufacturing, technology, and services.
Mr. Crooks’ audit-related expert assignments have included:
- acting as expert for large audit firms in connection with professional negligence claims
- advising lawyers and insolvency specialists on the audit work carried out by auditors in respect of entities subject to frauds
- acting as testifying expert on whether an audit should have discovered a multimillion-dollar fraud
- advising on the scope and adequacy of audit work in connection with a family dispute
- advising audit partners and firms subject to formal complaint by the regulator
Mr. Crooks’ other expert assignments have included:
- investigating allegations of accounting misstatements in connection with £billion civil litigation and regulatory investigation in the UK and wire fraud in the US
- providing expert testimony in relation to the tracing of monies in a £250 million fraud
- reviewing and challenging the support for a large warranty claim arising from an accounting “black hole”
- acting as testifying and advisory expert in connection with disputes arising from sale and purchase agreements
- acting as testifying expert on the accounting treatment of tax schemes
Mr. Crooks is a nonexecutive director of a UK listed business and chair of the Audit and Risk Committee. He is also chair of a charity.
Employment History
Grant Thornton
Partner
1998 – 2019
PwC
Audit senior to director
1983 – 1998
Neville Russell (now Mazars)
Trainee/qualifies ACA
1981 – 1983
Hemming Graham
Trainee
1979 – 1981
Professional Affiliations
FCA, Fellow Chartered Accountant in England & Wales
Community/Civic Involvement
Chair of small local charity