PwC parachutes in Singapore-based partner Kevin Burrowes as new CEO to fix Australian mess

An English-born accountant with 19 years experience as a PwC partner has been enlisted by the global firm to help steer its troubled Australian arm out of controversy.

Global accounting firm PwC has appointed Singapore-based Kevin Burrowes as the new CEO of its Australian arm. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Singapore-based PwC veteran Kevin Burrowes is a safe pair of hands who is being parachuted into its Australian headquarters to help steer the firm out of a controversy that has rocked its local business and severely embarrassed its global partners.

British-born Burrowes, a PwC partner for 19 years, is currently PwC’s global clients and industries leader, with a strong background in financial services.

With PwC’s New York-based global chair, Bob Moritz, delivering a scathing criticism of its Australian leadership, which, he said, had “failed to meet the network’s code of conduct and uphold its professional standards and values”, Burrowes will have a major role to play restoring trust in the organisation’s Australian business.

PwC’s Australian chair, Justin Carroll, said Burrowes’ experience across other parts of the accounting firm’s network would allow him to bring “a fresh perspective to the firm”.

He said Burrowes would “work with his colleagues and management team to re-earn trust with PwC Australia’s stakeholders”.

In a statement, Burrowes said he would “work tirelessly to increase transparency and repair trust with our stakeholders, while also enhancing our governance and culture”.

Burrowes took up his current role in Singapore in July 2020 after four years as a member of PwC’s UK’s executive board, where he was managing partner, clients and markets.

Educated at Bournemouth Grammar School in Dorset, he first joined PwC in 1986, becoming partner, before leaving the firm after 16 years in 2002 to become head of financial services consulting for IBM in London.

He then worked with Credit Suisse in senior roles for five years before rejoining PwC as partner in London in 2009, working his way up to the managing partner, clients and markets role in 2016.

Kevin Burrowes has been appointed as the new CEO of PwC Australia.

Burrowes’ experience, which has also included working for the Royal Bank of Scotland, has seen him work in London, New York, Singapore and Frankfurt.

Announcing his appointment, PwC said Burrowes had focused throughout his career on “advising, leading and delivering strategy and transformation projects, predominantly in financial services”.

In a post on Burrowes’ LinkedIn site, London-based PwC director Peter Flynn, who once reported to Burrowes, described his former boss as an “exemplary leader of PwC’s Financial Services industry”.

Flynn described him as a “superb mentor” who combines pragmatism with a relentless energy to get things done.

“His ability to take the team with him is impressive,” Flynn said.

“He is also great fun and diligently looks after the people who work for him.”

PwC’s statement said Burrowes would work with the firm’s new chief risk and ethics leader Tony O’Malley and the wider management team to implement the recommendations of Ziggy Switkowski’s independent review of PwC Australia, which will be published in September, “as well as implement any other necessary changes that need to be made to improve the firm’s culture and standards”.

In another post on his LinkedIn site last year from Singapore, Burrowes spent time discussing the importance of trust in business, commenting on the results of the latest Edelman Trust barometer.

He said trust in an organisation was becoming increasingly important for employees in deciding which companies they wanted to work for.

He said investors and clients would also vote with their feet if they didn’t feel a company had the right values and purpose.

“The most trusted institution any employee has is their own employer,” he said.

“They expect their business to be highly trusted.

“They also expect their CEO to have a really strong voice and to face societal challenges head on and to be part of forces in making a difference around that.”

He said business leaders had a role to play in “societal leadership”.

He said the “new equation” for business was focused on “both delivering trust and sustained outcomes”.

“They go hand-in-hand.

“If you are not trusted, it is very difficult to deliver sustained outcomes, and to deliver sustained outcomes, you really need to make sure you have trust.

“The two are highly interlinked.”