Nigel Batters and Benjamin Lee join BDO’s partnership
Bringing more than 40 years of industry experience between them, professional services firm BDO has added Nigel Batters and Benjamin Lee to its partnership teams in Brisbane and Melbourne.
Accounting and advisory network BDO has recruited two new audit partners to its Australian offices, with Nigel Batters joining in Brisbane and Benjamin Lee added in Melbourne.
The pair bring more than four decades of combined experience in finance and auditing both locally and internationally, predominantly spent at Pitcher Partners, Ernst & Young and Deloitte. BDO celebrated crossing the 250-partner mark in Australia earlier this year.
Joining the partnership in July, Nigel Batters returns to Brisbane after spending the past three years in Amsterdam as European chief financial officer for Australian real estate investment and management firm Cromwell. Prior to that, Batters spent eight and a half years as a partner at Pitcher Partners in Brisbane, his second stint after first joining in Melbourne in 2000, with a seven-year stretch at Ernst & Young’s London office in between.
According to BDO, Batters has over the course of his career developed deep industry experience across a number of sectors, including financial services (covering brokers, banking and capital markets), other service industries (such as healthcare and retail), and of course real estate, extending to funds and asset management, property development, and construction. In addition to assurance, he is expert in accounting standards and reporting requirements.
“We are delighted to welcome Nigel to the BDO team in Brisbane. His extensive experience and international perspective will further strengthen our audit services, enabling us to better serve our clients and help them achieve their commercial goals,” said company veteran and partner Damian Wright, who oversees the firm’s Audit business in Brisbane.
Benjamin Lee meanwhile joins BDO’s audit partnership in Melbourne after two decades with Deloitte, six of those as an office managing partner for the firm’s practice in Papua New Guinea.
A partner at the Big Four firm since 2014, his career at Deloitte has also seen Lee serve public and private sector clients on international group audit and compliance matters in other global locations, including in the US, Solomon Islands and across Southeast Asia.
