EY Ireland has appointed Cormac Gilroy to lead a newly established banking and finance practice within EY Law Ireland, based in the firm's Cork office, extending the multidisciplinary model that lets EY combine legal, tax and advisory work under one roof and compete more directly with independent law firms for banking and finance mandates. Financial terms of the appointment, including remuneration, were not disclosed.

EY Law Ireland is the legal arm of EY's Irish practice, part of a global EY Law network spanning more than 90 jurisdictions and over 3,500 lawyers, integrated with EY's tax and advisory services under a multidisciplinary model.

Cormac Gilroy joins with more than 10 years' experience advising banks, borrowers and sponsors on domestic and cross-border financings, having previously represented lenders and borrowers at Matheson and served as in-house legal counsel at Evara Ireland. He will lead the new practice working with banks, alternative finance providers, corporate borrowers, investors and sponsors.

The appointment is not an isolated hire but part of a deliberate build-out of legal capability across the Big Four, a trend regulators enabled once Ireland and the UK relaxed rules on multidisciplinary and alternative business structures.

That build-out has scale behind it. Research by Oxford's Said Business School put Big Four legal-services revenue at 1.5 billion dollars globally, and separately found EY was targeting a tripling of its lawyer headcount across the UK and Ireland within three years, a target this Cork appointment now contributes to directly.

The competitive dynamic is domestic too. KPMG launched its own KPMG Law practice in 2022, meaning EY's new banking and finance unit lands directly against a rival Big Four legal offering rather than into open ground.

For Ireland's accountancy and advisory market, the appointment reinforces that legal services are no longer a niche add-on for the Big Four but a genuine growth line, competing for banking and finance mandates traditionally the preserve of firms like Matheson.

Source: Irish Examiner / Law Society Gazette / The Currency