Who I Help

Directors & Businesses facing Corporate Restructuring or Recovery including Advisory. SMEs and owner-managed businesses. Family enterprises. Entrepreneurs and growth companies. Boards and investors. Foreign direct investment and international groups.

How I Help

Corporate restructuring and recovery. Examinership and independent expert reports. Business advisory and strategy. Corporate finance – Business valuations. Forensic accounting and Director governance advice.

“IT’S A JOURNEY, NOT A DESTINATION.”

Cormac Mohan is a Partner at AAB, based in Dublin, focused on corporate restructuring and recovery. A practising Chartered Accountant with more than 30 years of experience, he advises business owners, boards, investors and international groups on growth, governance, financing, corporate structuring, restructuring and recovery. Cormac built a progressive, full-service accounting, audit, tax and business advisory practice in Dublin over more than two decades, before joining AAB’s expanding Irish platform. He also has a significant track record in complex and distressed situations, including corporate restructurings, independent expert reports, liquidations, business recovery assignments and forensic accounting investigations.

Sectors/Support

Owner Managed Businesses – Hospitality & Tourism. Construction & Engineering.  Retail & Consumer. Healthcare. Technology & Pharmaceuticals.

From Global Corporates to Trusted Business Advisor

Earlier in my career, I held senior management roles with two major multinational corporations, working in financial leadership across Northern Europe before moving into a senior business management role in Dublin. Those roles gave me first-hand experience of multinational reporting, commercial finance, operational control and cross-border decision-making. In 2002 I founded FM Accountants, and over two decades built it into a full-service accounting, audit, tax and advisory firm, working across a range of sectors including hospitality, construction, technology and pharma. Following my firm joining AAB’s Irish platform, my role is shifting to concentrate more fully on corporate restructuring and recovery for small and medium-sized businesses, an area I have worked in extensively for many years.

Looking Forward, Not Just Back

My strength over the years has been advising clients by looking forward, rather than simply through the rear-view mirror. Statutory accounts and tax returns matter, but the real value comes from a deeper understanding of a client’s business model and strategy: where they are headed, what they want to achieve, and whether they are working on the right things within the business. That forward-looking approach, combined with an awareness of the wider macroeconomic environment, is what led me increasingly into corporate restructuring, helping clients get their business onto the right footing, whether through a formal court process or a consensual restructuring.

A Journey, Not a Destination

The most valuable lesson I have learned is the importance of staying focused and resilient, not overreacting, and trusting your instinct alongside your experience. You have to be willing to seek feedback from all stakeholders, including investors, business owners and your own team, and make an informed decision based on the best information available, even when you don’t have the full picture. If I had to sum that up in a phrase, it would be that it’s a journey, not a destination; you won’t achieve everything quickly its more about consistency building expertise and experience: there will be setbacks along the way, and the key is to stay resilient and focused while working towards the objective and result.

Earning Trust, Navigating Hard Decisions

Earning a client’s trust is central to how I work. That means building integrity and credibility over time, so the client comes to see you as an objective, independent and unbiased advisor, someone who gives them a full, 360-degree view of a situation rather than only what they want to hear. Some of the most significant client relationships I’ve built have come from difficult conversations, encouraging a client to change direction or pivot away from something that wasn’t working, even where that advice was met with resistance at first. Over time, clients have come to value that honesty, particularly when times in the business cycle are challenging; it’s under pressure that a client really sees if you have the agility in thinking on your feet and providing clarity with a compelling path forward.

Sharing in the Journey

The most satisfying part of the role is seeing clients succeed and sharing that journey with them, sometimes over many years, through the peaks and troughs that come with running a business. Watching a client move from humble beginnings and basic structures into a bigger, more sophisticated company, and eventually towards a sale, succession or exit, is when you really see the benefit of years, sometimes decades, of work together. Within my own team and the wider AAB organisation, what stands out most is the sense of shared success; everyone commits to the collective effort, and as a partner, part of my role is making sure that environment stays fair and collaborative for everyone involved.

Direct Advice, Delivered with Care

One example that stands out involved encouraging a client to see a different direction for his business on exiting examinership and asking him directly whether he was up for the challenge ahead. He later quoted me in an interview that this encounter brought a sense of reality he hadn’t fully confronted, and while he took it personally at first, it made him stop and consider whether he was working on the business or simply in it. Being told that your advice gave someone that kind of clarity, even when it wasn’t easy to hear, is one of the greatest compliments a client can give.

Timing, Trust and Technology

One of the biggest challenges in my area is delivering structured advice without unnecessarily alarming a client. Time is often critical, particularly where a business is approaching insolvency and needs specialist advice to undertake a recovery process, so it’s important to guide clients through the challenges with clarity while being proportionate, and to focus as much on mindset and resourcing as on the financial position itself. A common misconception about the profession is that accountants are reserved, introverted number-crunchers. In reality, it’s ultimately a people business, working closely with clients, teams and stakeholders that create lasting and intrinsic value. I believe the role of an Accountant is moving even further towards that of a trusted business advisor as AI takes on more of the routine technical work.

My key strengths are the depth and breadth of my experience, across industry and practice, my leadership qualities, and the ability to work well within a larger organisation without ego. Looking ahead, I’m keen to make greater use of technology, using it to support decision-making without letting it replace the intuition, experience and technical judgement that clients ultimately rely on.