Exactly one week into his new role as PwC’s head of legal, Ed Stacey is explaining what it was like when the big four accountant’s legal arm integrated into the wider firm last year, having previously been strictly segregated for regulatory reasons.

“We were a ring-fenced separate partnership and while we sat mostly in this building [in central London] we actually had glass barriers around us, literally glass barriers, and you had to swipe to come in and out of the doors,” he says.