Baringa boosts Australian partner team with four members
Baringa has strengthened its senior team in Australia with four senior Big Four recruits.
International management consulting firm Baringa has brought in former KPMG partner Paul Costa to head its Australian government and public sector practice.
Costa is one of three senior leadership recruits with a Big Four background to join the firm since the start of the year, alongside fellow former KPMG partner James Colbert and ex-Deloitte partner Phil Goulstone, while Baringa partner Richard Jones has transferred with the firm from the UK.
Established in London in 2000, the B Corp-certified consultancy has since expanded across the globe with a headcount of around 2,000 professionals spread across 16 offices in Europe, the US and Asia Pacific, including an outlet launched in Charlotte last year and coming expansion to Birmingham.
The firm first set up shop in Australia in 2018, and now looks to be out to capitalise on a shifting Canberra market through a recently established government & public sector practice.
Leading that practice will be KPMG partner recruit Paul Costa, who joins Baringa after more than a decade and a half at the Big Four firm between Australia and the UK. Having kicked off his career with a twelve-year stint at Telstra, Costa joined KPMG in 2007, with a particular focus on the NSW government, before being elevated to the partnership in 2016 and later spending more than two years with KPMG’s infrastructure, government & healthcare practice in London.
“Growing on our already existing Government team in the UK, I am looking forward to building an outstanding team locally, with people who share Baringa’s curiosity and drive and work with our client’s interests at heart,” Costa stated. “Baringa is committed to helping governments solve the most complex problems and deliver on their promise to the citizens they serve every day. Added to this is Baringa’s ambition to be the world’s most trusted consulting firm.”
Costa follows former Melbourne-based KPMG consulting colleague James Colbert in crossing to Baringa, the latter as a partner in the firm’s energy & resources practice. Prior to his eighteen months at KPMG, Colbert spent four years at Schneider Electric, including as Asia Pacific digital grid regional director. An expert in energy sector strategy and tech transformation, he also previously held senior leadership roles at Energy Australia, Origin Energy, and General Electric.
Risk & compliance expert Phil Goulstone has meanwhile joined Baringa’s financial services division from Westpac, prior to which he spent two decades at Deloitte where he led the firm’s risk transformation offering. First joining Deloitte as a project assurance manager in the UK, Goulstone boasts over thirty years of banking IT industry experience, including early time spent as a systems engineer at IBM and subsequent roles at Deutsche, Goldman Sachs and Lloyds.
In addition to its local recruits, Baringa has also recently had a boost to its senior leadership team in Australia courtesy of UK partner Richard Jones, who has relocated down under. Jones joins Baringa’s energy & utilities practice alongside Colbert, bringing another two decades worth of consulting experience to the business.
A Baringa veteran, Jones joined the consultancy from Accenture in 2006 not long after its founding, and was elevated to partner at the beginning of 2017.
