Who Is Fergus Cleaver?

Fergus Cleaver, a principal at Cleaver Partners, has an invaluable depth of experience in the accounting, tax and business advisory fields.

Cleaver’s core competencies include:

  • Business advisory services
  • Business financing for early-stage startups, established small and midsize businesses, and mature enterprise-grade firms
  • Virtual CFO roles
  • Budgeting and financial forecasting for a range of potential scenarios and possible business decisions
  • Tax advisory and preparation services designed to support effective tax planning and minimize clients’ tax burdens within the constraints of applicable law
  • Custom-tailored bookkeeping and accounting services for clients seeking periodic and annual accounts for tax, appraisal, and cash flow purposes

Fergus Cleaver’s Client Approach

Cleaver also has considerable experience in management consulting and succession planning across a wide range of industries.

Cleaver Partners client list spans the full breadth of New Zealand’s economy: transportation and logistics, tourism and hospitality, professional services, freight, the trades, marketing and advertising, legal services, and more.

Though Cleaver Partners focuses on New Zealand-based businesses, Cleaver works with many companies that do business in international markets: Australia, East Asia, India, North America, and beyond.

Mr. Cleaver’s clear, forthright client communication makes him an invaluable asset for Cleaver Partners — but more importantly, his clients. He sees himself not as a buttoned-up business and accounting expert, but as a trusted partner and guide. Fergus Cleaver keeps abreast of legislative and market changes, this allows him to be first to know about new regulatory developments that may affect his clients’ finances and business-planning activities.

In the years to come, Fergus Cleaver looks forward to deepening his partnerships with current and future Cleaver Partners clients.

Fergus Cleaver: Education & Experience

Auckland born and bred, Cleaver attended the University of Auckland as a business major and economics minor. Aside from Auckland University, he also attended Simon Fraser University in Canada, studying economics under an exchange student program.

Following his return to the New Zealand, Fergus took on an entry level role at Cleaver Partners and spent the next half-decade working his way up the ranks. Along the way, he gained the sort of invaluable practical knowledge that all the accounting and economics seminars in the world can’t teach. In 2013, he was named a principal of Cleaver Partners.

Today Mr. Cleaver is responsible for managing client relationships and overseeing day-to-day operational activities at Cleaver Partners’ home office.

Fergus Cleaver: Community Involvement

When he’s not working overtime at the office, Cleaver enjoys skiing, travel with his family, and work with charities and nonprofit organizations in Auckland and beyond. He donates time and money to Auckland-area arts and culture groups, child welfare organizations, animal welfare societies, poverty alleviation charities, and social justice organizations for New Zealand’s native peoples, among others.

In concert with Cleaver Partners, he provides pro bono accounting and business advisory services to these groups.

Fergus Cleaver is also an advocate for sustainable development and power-generation practices, including small-scale hydropower projects that minimally disrupt natural ecosystems. In the years ahead, he looks forward to working with new social enterprises.