Senior KPMG talent scatters to rival firms across Australia

26 April 2023 Consultancy.com.au

A number of consulting firms around Australia – including Ankura, Auxilium, Aurecon, Cor Cordis and Big Four rivals – have recently picked up senior talent from KPMG.

The Australian branch of professional services firm KPMG has leaked a wealth of senior talent in recent weeks, in particular from its forensics and restructuring offering.

While FTI Consulting has scooped up many of the departees, other consulting firms including Ankura, Aurecon, Cor Cordis, and Auxilium together with Big Four rivals PwC and Ernst & Young have also taken the opportunity to boost their senior leadership stocks.

Senior KPMG talent scatters to rival firms across Australia

Having recently expanded its local senior managing director numbers to six via the recruitment of ex-KPMG partners Greg Meredith and Christine Oliver, growing professional services firm Ankura has further added to its leadership lines with the addition of former colleague Jeremy Smith as a director in Melbourne, while also onboarding former McGrathNicol director and one-time KPMG associate David Bryant as a managing director in Perth.

Bryant joins the firm’s Transactions, Turnaround & Restructuring businesses following a seven-and-a-half-year stint at McGrathNicol, before which he served for a similar period at KPMG’s offices in Perth after crossing from a brief period abroad at Grant Thornton in Toronto. Smith has meanwhile spent the past five years working his way up to manager at KPMG, and now joins Ankura’s Disputes and Economics team as a senior director in Melbourne.

Big Four rivals EY and PwC have also capitalised on the KPMG leakage, respectively bringing in associate director Phoebe Noon and managing director Bruce Kennedy, the latter who is joined by senior manager Jessica Obradovic. Noon follows in the footsteps of recent partner and director restructuring recruits Morgan Kelly and Clare Baily (who both also spent more than a decade at Ferrier Hodgson), joining EY in Brisbane after four years at KPMG.

Kennedy meanwhile returns to PwC as a Forensics managing director in Perth, bringing a decade and a half of Big Four experience spent between PwC and KPMG and in the UK, South Africa and Australia – the past six years with the latter in WA. Kennedy crosses to PwC alongside Perth forensics colleague Obradovic, who has spent the past six-plus years at KPMG, before which she served for three and a half years as an auditor at Crowe, now part of the Findex network.

Beyond the Big Four and traditional restructuring & turnaround consultancies, another former Perth-based KPMG duo in Andrew Smith and Melanie Khoo have also found new homes, respectively as a partner and director at insolvency boutiques Auxilium and Cor Cordis, while Melbourne-based KPMG head of innovation Amanda Good has now popped up as a director of Innovation & Futures at engineering and design consultancy Aurecon.

Together the trio spent roughly a decade and a half at KPMG between them, with Smith also serving for almost two decades at Ferrier Hodgson and Khoo having likewise spent eight and a half years at the KPMG acquisition. Good, meanwhile, joins Aurecon in Melbourne after the past six and a half years with KPMG, prior to which she worked mostly in media and digital marketing.

More on: KPMG
Australia
Company profile
KPMG is not a Australia partner of Consultancy.org
Partnership information »
Partnership information

Consultancy.org works with three partnership levels: Local, Regional and Global.

KPMG is a Local partner of Consultancy.org in Middle East, Netherlands.

Upgrade or more information? Get in touch with our team for details.