Sydney’s celebrity accountant Brett Kelly acquires new firms across NSW

“Reluctant” celebrity accountant Brett Kelly, whose clients include Tina Arena and Ray Hadley, has acquired two new firms across NSW, Annette Sharp reveals.

Celebrity accountant Brett Kelly.

Sydney’s reluctant “celebrity accountant” Brett Kelly is expanding his reach after acquiring two new shops, his fifth and sixth acquisitions in recent months.

Kelly, who counts among high-profile clients Tina Arena and Ray Hadley, has picked up new firms in the CBD and Newcastle. These follow the recent purchases of firms in Oran Park, the inner west, Newcastle and Central Coast.

The two acquisitions will deliver more than a $7 million annualised revenue lift to Kelly’s Kelly+Partners a spokesman said on Friday.

Kelly, who helped broadcaster Hadley turn around his problems with the ATO, has acquired 13 businesses since 2017 and said he has begun talks to expand his business further.

“We are excited that with these acquisitions as they are part of our strategy of building each of our locations to a size that dominates their local region,” the Kelly+Partners CEO said. Kelly established his business in 2006 with seed funding from James Packer’s Ellerston Capital and now boasts more than 8000 clients and 51 partners.

The company consists of 25 operating businesses across 16 locations in Greater Sydney, Melbourne and Hong Kong.

THOSE TWO GIRLS END MORNING RADIO GIG

They were dubbed as “stars to watch” when they were meteorically launched onto national radio in 2019 but on Friday came news Sarah Wills and Lisa Carlaw, aka commercial radio’s Those Two Girls, would be winding up their early morning radio show.

The pair have been presenting a one-hour program from 5am to 6am on the network.

Yesterday SCA confirmed the women will be replaced by a breakfast show highlights packages in each state.

The women will move to an afternoon slot with a podcast called Halfternoons with Those Two Girls which will air from May 31 on new SCA app LiSTNR. After meeting on Facebook, the women began hosting events using the name Those Two Girls.

Sarah Wills and Lisa Carlaw are moving on from morning radio.

So popular was their 40-something women’s banter, within three years they’d been picked up by SCA boss Gemma Fordham.

At the time the pair described their radio discovery as the “stuff of dreams”.

“ … Gemma Fordham tapped us on the shoulder in late 2016 after seeing some of our work online and hearing about our sellout events. The rest is history.”

On Friday they said the decision to move to afternoons was something they’d been pushing for “for yonks”.

“After a good, long, hard look at ourselves and the industry, we realised podcasts are where we want to be, and the ongoing success and reach of FORTY (another podcast by the women) has further fuelled that fire.”

The women also produced a third podcast, Sugar Rush, for the network.