KordaMentha celebrates record number of new partners
As it leans into the new financial year, restructuring and business advisory firm KordaMentha has celebrated twenty recent partnership promotions across its Australian and international offices.
Many of the new partners have been recruited from the Big Four and other top-level organisations over the past twelve months, including public sector trio Lachlan Abbott, Jess Finlay, and Andrew Mrnjavac in the firm’s new Canberra office.
Other partnership recruits and promotions have been made in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Singapore, and cover KordaMentha’s growing range of practice areas including performance improvement, real estate, cybersecurity and forensics.
“The past twelve months have been among the most exciting in the firm’s history,” stated co-founders Mark Korda and Mark Mentha. “We have grown significantly, expanding into new service areas and developing even more strategic skills. We congratulate our newly-promoted partners who have become experts in their fields and welcome those who have chosen KordaMentha as their new home.”
Promotions
Lara Wiggins (restructuring), James Wagg (performance improvement), and Ben Mahler (forensics) have all been with KordaMentha for a decade and a half or thereabouts, and have now been promoted to partner in Melbourne. Another new Melbourne-based forensics partner, Anya Gielen, joined the firm in 2019 after a decade at PwC.
Restructuring partner David Kim likewise joined KordaMentha in 2019, in Singapore, having previously spent more than a decade between FTI Consulting and Ferrier Hodgson in the city-state and Sydney, while Sydney-based financial crime and public sector partner Grace Mason joined the firm from AUSTRAC as an executive director in late 2022.
Cybersecurity partner Tony Vizza also joined the firm in Sydney in 2022, bringing two decades worth of expertise and advocacy work in cybersecurity, technology, privacy and the law, including as a board member of the Australian Information Security Association (AISA).
PwC hires
Like many other local consultancies of various stripes, KordaMentha has capitalised on PwC’s government tax scandal by bringing in disenchanted or discarded senior talent, with former PwC government, health, infrastructure & defence national practice leader Peter Konidaris the highest profile of those to cross.
Others to join as partners from the embattled firm include infrastructure duo David Ballantyne and James Wijemanne in Sydney and Brisbane, and KordaMentha’s Melbourne-based healthcare practice lead Richard Ainley, who also spent seven and a half years at Nous Group.
In Melbourne, public sector partner Morgan Forrest arrived late last year after more than a decade at Strategy&, with office colleague and one-time Bill Shorten chief of staff and Victorian government veteran Alison Currie having also been a partner at PwC until mid-last year.
Other recruits
Among the firm’s most recent partnership recruits, Roheena Khan crossed from Deloitte’s technology partnership in Sydney after a decade at the Big Four firm and an earlier stint at SAP, while Ryan Korda joined the firm’s real estate team in Melbourne last month after more than a decade at CBRE, latterly as national director of industrial valuations.
In a double-coup, new partnership pair John Dewar and Dionne Higgins both joined KordaMentha’s performance improvement and public sector practice in Melbourne since last September from high level roles in the education sector, having respectively served as the vice-chancellors of La Trobe and RMIT.
