Pitcher Partners welcomes leaders with international backgrounds

Pitcher Partners has added a fresh international flavour to the firm’s local offices, with three new partners bringing overseas experience from the United Sales, Wales and South Africa.

Accounting and advisory network Pitcher Partners has recruited new partners to its practice in Sydney and Perth, who together add almost eight decades worth of combined professional experience in Australia and abroad.

An automotive retail specialist, Maya Sutanto joins in Sydney from Crowe alongside former Deloitte Private partner Nathan Balban, while Marius van der Merwe has been added as an executive director in Perth.

Speaking on the firm’s latest senior appointments, Pitcher Partners’ Sydney managing director Adam Irwin said there had been a growing demand for its services in the middle market. “People want more from their audit partners, including the sound advice that comes with having access to senior personnel and their expertise. It’s a real strength of Pitcher Partners that you have the assurance of dealing with partners and people who really understand your business.”

Nathan Balban crosses after spending more than sixteen years with Deloitte, including the past decade as an audit partner out of Western Sydney leading complex external engagements for clients in the consumer & retail, manufacturing, distribution and construction sectors among others. Prior to Deloitte, Balban spent a decade at PwC, originally joining in Wales before transferring with the firm to Australia in 2000.

Joining Pitcher’s audit partnership in April, Maya Sutanto has been recruited after spending almost the entirety of her 25-year career between Horwath and Crowe, including a decade-long stint with the latter in the US where she served as a managing director. Starting out at Horwath in Sydney in 1996, Sutanto has also spent much of her career as an automotive sector specialist, providing accounting and advisory services to medium and large private dealerships.

Marius van der Merwe has meanwhile joined Pitcher Partners as a business advisory & assurance executive director in Perth, bringing more than two decades of accounting experience in external audits and investigations amassed in Australia and South Africa. Most recently, he was a partner at Dry Kirkness, before which he spent almost twelve years at fellow local boutique Butler Settineri preceded by an earlier stint at Grant Thornton.

A specialist in the not-for-profit space, van der Merwe has also been tasked with bringing an innovative lens to Pitcher’s audit practice; “My brief is to relook at everything we do,” he stated. “The audit game is really behind the eight ball when it comes to innovation, and I am extremely excited about the opportunities in big data, machine learning and AI. We are ready to innovate and that will give our people and our clients significantly better outcomes.”