Australian turnaround consultancies step up NZ ambitions

Leading Australian turnaround & restructuring consulting firms McGrathNicol and KordaMentha are stepping up their ambitions in New Zealand.

Having recently celebrated its 20th anniversary in Australia, McGrathNicol has now added Andrew Keenan from PwC as a partner in Auckland, with Keenan following fellow recent recruit Alton Pollard, who joined from KPMG.

Described as locally owned and operated, the dual additions take McGrathNicol New Zealand’s partnership numbers to five, further including another former KPMG and PwC director duo Kare Johnstone and John Minn.

Keenan joins McGrathNicol’s partnership ranks after spending the past decade and a half in PwC’s deals division between New Zealand and the UK, most recently as a director of sustainability & corporate finance with responsibility for valuations, capital raising and strategic business reviews based out of Auckland.

“Andrew is a great addition to our New Zealand team,” stated Andrew Grenfell, New Zealand managing partner at McGrathNicol. “We are excited to welcome him at a time when our clients are looking for clear advice to improve performance, mitigate risk and achieve stability and growth in a challenging economic environment. They will benefit from the breadth of experience and expertise Andrew brings.”

Keenan’s arrival follows that of Alton Pollard as a partner in August, with the latter previously serving as a director and head of debt advisory & sustainable finance during his five years at KPMG. Bookending his earlier local banking career, Pollard also spent more than a dozen years between Westpac and ANZ, broken up by a decade at financial institutions in the UK and Ireland.

Meanwhile, KordaMentha, one of McGrathNicol’s leading rivals in Australia, is also stepping up its ambitions in New Zealand with a new and larger office in Auckland, its former local branch having rebranded to Calibre Partners in 2020. The firm also recently promoted financial crime risk management and compliance specialist Jing Wyllie to executive director.

“This is an area of increasing need and complexity, not only due to sophisticated criminal activity, but also to proposed legislative changes,” the firm previously stated. “The move to grow KordaMentha’s trans-Tasman financial crime practice aims to meet the rising demands of clients aligned to governments’ evolving anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regimes.”

Both McGrathNicol and KordaMentha were named among Australia’s top consulting firms for 2024 earlier this year.