Grant Thornton adds two new partners in Sydney and Brisbane

Accounting and consulting firm Grant Thornton has added two new partners over the past fortnight: Matthew Lane in its corporate tax division and risk & compliance expert Richard Storey.

An anti-money laundering specialist, Storey joins the firm in Sydney after most recently serving as risk & compliance general manager at Tabcorp, before which he was a partner at KordaMentha and associate partner at Ernst & Young.

Lane meanwhile joins Grant Thornton as a corporate tax partner in Brisbane, likewise bringing Big Four experience, both as a director at Deloitte and earlier at KPMG, before more recently being recruited to the partnership of PKF.

Richard Storey

Storey’s past eighteen months at Tabcorp add to almost three decades of experience in supporting clients in the banking, gambling, digital finance, and funds management sectors. In addition to KordaMentha and Ernst & Young, Storey was previously Asia Pacific AML/CTF services lead at Thomson Reuters, and earlier spent more than a decade running his own boutique consultancy.

Notably, Storey’s recruitment follows the recent addition of fellow AML/CTF specialists Martin Stone and Annelies Homersham in Melbourne, as the firm looks to bolster its already leading service line ahead of the further regulatory changes due to come into effect next year and the suggestion there’s only a limited pool of expert advisors in the county.

“It is great to have someone of Richard’s calibre and experience based in our Sydney office,” said risk consulting partner Neil Jeans, who sold his own boutique AML/CTF consultancy to Grant Thornton in 2022. “His presence will support the unprecedented demand for our services nationally, from both new and existing businesses subject to updated AML/CTF obligations.”

Matthew Lane

Meanwhile, Matthew Lane has crossed to Grant Thornton’s corporate tax team in Brisbane after just two years as a partner at PKF, before which he was a director at Deloitte. Previously, he spent the best part of a decade at QSuper, including as the superannuation fund’s head of group finance, having earlier kicked off his career with a five-year stint at KPMG.

Across his two-decade career as both an in-house corporate tax leader and external advisor, Lane has developed tax expertise in relation to financing arrangements, capital management, global compliance, and governance reviews among other areas, along with providing transaction support services such as diligence and domestic and international structuring.

“Matt’s business acumen, alongside his broad tax and financial services industry expertise and ability to navigate complex tax landscapes is a welcome addition to our team and will complement our already extensive client service offering,” said Tim Hands, who heads up Grant Thornton’s tax division in Brisbane, with Daniel Kave recently appointed as national managing partner.