PwC leadership braces for tax scandal hearings as another departure leaves a hole

PwC Australia must find a new head of consulting while its leadership readies itself for a fresh round of grilling before a Senate committee.

PwC Australia has spent days preparing for the return of high stakes parliamentary hearings into the consulting sector, as the professional services giant scrambles to replace the longstanding head of its consulting arm.

The Senate is set to resume hearings on Friday, with PwC boss Kevin Burrowes and the firm’s chief risk and ethics executive Jan McCahey to face two hours of grilling before rivals KPMG And EY front up later in the day.

This comes in the wake of the resignation of PwC’s highly regarded head of consulting David McKeering, who gave notice in recent weeks he would leave the firm after a horror year for the professional services giant.

Mr McKeering told new Australian boss Kevin Burrowes that he was leaving PwC after the Christmas period.

“It was my decision to retire,” Mr McKeering told The Australian. “I told Kevin at the end of January … I want to spend more time with my family.”

David McKeering has resigned from the firm.

Mr McKeering said he was still in discussions with Mr Burrowes about his departure package, after 19 years at PwC, including a role in Singapore building PwC South East Asia Consulting and his most recent role as markets leader for PwC Australia and ASEANZ Consulting. In that role he was focused on helping PwC drive a growth agenda for the Australia, Southeast Asia and New Zealand region providing client and market leadership.

A timeline of the PwC scandal notes Mr McKeering was put forward as the key contact for the firm’s board as it faced investigation by the Australian Taxation Office over the tax scandal.

The ATO’s version of events notes Mr McKeering and PwC’s former boss Luke Sayers met with second commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn in April 2020, shortly after the tax office put the firm on notice over “the range of concerns the ATO has had with PwC tax group’s behaviour”.

The loss of the highly regarded partner and leader is understood to have come as a major shock when revealed by PwC.

It follows the move by a coterie of current and former partners preparing to take legal action against the audit and consulting giant after a horror year that saw the firm axe its profitable government consulting arm while new business evaporated in the face of scandal.

PwC has been under siege since it was revealed the firm’s tax practice shared confidential government documents in an effort to frontrun new laws introduced in 2016.

PwC’s former head of international tax Peter Collins was banned by the Tax Practitioners Board after it found he distributed the confidential briefings as PwC sought to boost its tax business and gain new clients.

Mr McKeering’s departure comes as PwC seeks to grapple with a wave of other partners seeking to flee the firm.

The Australian understands a number of partners who have left PwC, but not join its rivals, have been warned the firm would seek to hold back a significant portion of their partner payments.

Paul McNab has taken legal action against his former employer.

This comes after former PwC partner Paul McNab took action against the firm after it cut him out of its retirement plan after deciding his new job at law firm DLA Piper was a move to a major competitor. Mr McNab has argued in papers lodged with the NSW Supreme Court that PwC had wrongly concluded the law firm was a competitor, in a case which may have implications for other partners seeking to leave the professional services firm.

PwC has sought to put the brakes on distributions to partners, with Mr Burrows delaying the payment of the balance by a month in October last year.

The Senate committee is expected to turn the screws on PwC over the firm’s engagement with an inquiry investigating the tax scandal.

The sale of the firm’s government consulting arm to Allegro Funds in a $1 deal, that saw the operation rebranded as Scyne Advisory, is also expected to face scrutiny.

The tax office and the Tax Practitioners Board are set to appear first in the day, with the regulators expected to field questions around their investigations into the scandal as well as a looming scandal surrounding EY.