our history

The firm was formed in 1976 by Bert Rus­sell and his son Ken. Bert retired in 1980 and the prac­tice was then car­ried on by Ken until his broth­er Alas­tair Rus­sell joined the firm in 1989.

Russell & Russell chairman Alastair Russell, MD Stuart Clark, directors Rosslyn McMaster and Ian McMonagle, and co-founder Ken Russell

The firm cur­rent­ly has 14 team mem­bers, con­sist­ing of 6 qual­i­fied accoun­tants; 3 part-qual­i­fied/­trainee accoun­tants; 1 trainee book­keep­er; 1 tax senior; 1 ful­ly qual­i­fied tax prac­ti­tion­er with the Char­tered Insti­tute of Tax­a­tion; and 2 admin­is­tra­tive staff. Our office at 4 Roy­al Cres­cent allows easy access to and from the M8, as well as pro­vid­ing car park­ing facil­i­ties for our clients.

Our client base ranges from indi­vid­ual tax clients to lim­it­ed com­pa­nies with annu­al turnovers of over £30 mil­lion. Our clients are main­ly based in the West of Scot­land and are engaged in the man­u­fac­tur­ing, retail­ing, con­struc­tion and ser­vice sec­tors. We have a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of clients involved in the health sec­tor. A list of clients who will pro­vide ref­er­ences is avail­able on request.

We are expe­ri­enced Xero Sil­ver Part­ners, which means we have the train­ing and resources to help man­age, opti­mise, and devel­op your busi­ness. We can help you get start­ed with cloud-based account­ing or with your switch from anoth­er soft­ware.

Ken Rus­sell grad­u­at­ed from St Andrews Uni­ver­si­ty in 1967 and trained with Mann Judd Gor­don in Glas­gow, where he qual­i­fied in 1971. He then spent 4 years with Deloitte Hask­ins & Sells (Deloitte) in Paris, where he gained expe­ri­ence in deal­ing with large inter­na­tion­al clients such as Hon­ey­well Bull, Proc­tor & Gam­ble and Ben­dix Cor­po­ra­tion. Since form­ing Rus­sell & Rus­sell with his father, he has devel­oped an in-depth knowl­edge of UK tax­a­tion.

Alas­tair Rus­sell grad­u­at­ed from St Andrews Uni­ver­si­ty in 1983 and then com­plet­ed a post­grad­u­ate diplo­ma at Stir­ling Uni­ver­si­ty. He joined the Glas­gow office of Deloitte in 1984, where he was involved in the audit of com­pa­nies from £100,000 to £100,000,000 turnover. In par­tic­u­lar, he was in charge of the audit of a plant hire busi­ness, which was the only “Han­son Group” sub­sidiary that Deloitte audit­ed. Upon qual­i­fy­ing in 1987, he trans­ferred to the Bermu­da office of Deloitte, where he was in charge of the off­shore account­ing func­tion of a major inter­na­tion­al client with a turnover in excess of $300 mil­lion. He was one of the first sev­en peo­ple in Scot­land to com­plete the Insti­tute of Char­tered Accoun­tants of Scot­land PC con­sul­tan­cy course.

Ian McMona­gle start­ed his long tax career by join­ing the Inland Rev­enue in 1977. After work­ing for 12 years in var­i­ous capac­i­ties and depart­ments with­in the Inland Rev­enue he left in 1989 to join PKF. After hav­ing worked for a few firms of Char­tered Accoun­tants in Glas­gow, Ian joined us in 2006 and is our Tax Direc­tor. Ian is a qual­i­fied Char­tered Tax Advis­er and a mem­ber of the Char­tered Insti­tute of Tax­a­tion.

When peo­ple come to us, they are in dif­fer­ing finan­cial states — some doing well, oth­ers strug­gling a lit­tle. We see our role as work­ing with these busi­ness­es, what­ev­er their cur­rent posi­tion. We help them iden­ti­fy their real per­son­al and busi­ness goals.

We then work with them to devel­op their strat­e­gy to achieve those goals. Some of our clients find that they are too tied up in the day-to-day tasks of the busi­ness to take a prop­er view of how it is doing and where it is going. We help our clients to work ON and not just IN their busi­ness­es.

We recog­nised sev­er­al years ago that own­er man­aged busi­ness­es need their accoun­tants to be more than just a score­keep­er. We there­fore put great effort into being seen as part of the team by our clients.