PAUL Mankin, long-standing head of corporate finance for PwC in the North East was made a partner in July last year.

Paul, who was the first full-time staff member of Newcastle's corporate finance team in 1988, has led the team since 2004.

During recent years the Newcastle corporate finance team has been PwC’s most successful regional team in the UK in terms of fee generation in relation to targets.

Paul is well known across the business community in the region and has advised on a number of high- profile transactions both locally and across Europe. His achievements have been recognised with a number of awards including Accountant of the Year at the North East Accountancy Awards and Dealmaker of the Year at the inaugural Journal Dealmaker awards.

Paul expanded his corporate finance team during 2010 with the addition of Gareth Marshall who was recruited as a manager from KPMG in April, followed in November by Simon John from the PwC London office and Eoghan Johnston who is a graduate of the successful PwC Flying Start program who both join the department as senior associates.

Gareth said “It’s an exciting move and an opportunity to join a strong and successful team with a healthy transaction pipeline.”

Paul said: “The deals market in the North East is showing signs of recovery and our confidence is reflected by growing our regional CF team in Newcastle.

“Activity has picked up really quite markedly since September last year and we've got a strong order book of work in progress at the moment.

“The test will be whether this activity results in completed transactions in 2011.”