HST celebrates its 15th anniversary

HST, the well-known local consultancy firm with international competency and that provides several supports for the private and public sector celebrates its 15th year anniversary.
For the past years HST was present on major business deals in the country as a consulting firm and support several huge companies including international businesses on their activity here.
Over the years, HST partners also played a leading role in strengthening the accounting and finance profession in the country. For instance about a decade ago the firm’s senior partners led one of the national technical committees on drafting a financial report law and design appropriate institutional structure for adoption of International Financial Reporting and Auditing Standards (IFRS).
“On the basis of the committee’s recommendation in 2014 the Ethiopian government enacted a financial reporting law and established the Accounting and Audit Board of Ethiopia to regulate financial reporting and corporate governance in the country,” Solomon Gizaw, one of the founding partners and current Managing Partner and leader of the Consulting and Training functions, said at the anniversary ceremony, which was held on Friday June 14 at the Hilton Hotel.
In early May 2019 HST’s two partners, Solomon and Zekrie Nigatu, Director of Corporate Finance and Executive Development, has also volunteered to serve as member of a National Public Finance Management Advisory Council chaired by Eyob Tekalign State Minister of Finance with the core objective of improving accountability in the management of public finances in Ethiopia.
HST was formed by the merger of three firms; Haile Leul Tamiru and Co, Solomon Gizaw and Co and Tekeste Gebru and Co.
“Although the firms had 12 years of combined experience, HST (represents the first initials of the name of the founder) had a humble beginning. For the first 7 to 8 years the firm supported many clients in many sectors of the Ethiopian economy with audit and tax services to improve their compliance system,” Solomon said.
He said that over the last seven years, HST expanded its audit and tax services to include management consulting services in the areas of corporate finance, strategy, human capital and corporate trainings which have contributions to its clients’ core area of operations.
One of the qualities of the company is that it follows a competence based talent management system in attracting, developing, rewarding and retaining its employees and spends millions of birr every year for long term professional training and development.
Solomon said that the firm currently has 12 partners and directors and is targeting to increase the partners and directors to 25 with 500 multi-disciplinary professional staff from the current 135 and achieve the firm’s set revenue target by 2030.
“To realize this vision the firm has already formed HST-Agriculture that is a sector based consulting business unit that focuses on agriculture capacity building, project management and market access to agriculture products,” he said. The service for the stated sub sector will commence service in September later this year.