Scyne Advisory blocks conflicts, puts cooling off rules on public servants

Government consulting house Scyne Advisory has put in place cooling off periods for public servants among a string of measures to block potential conflicts of interest.

From left: Ben Neal (Scyne), Fay Bou (Allegro), Adrian Loader (Allegro), Tim Jackson (Scyne) and Diane Rutter (Scyne). Picture: Renee Nowytarger

Private equity-backed government consulting house Scyne Advisory has put in place cooling off periods for public servants among a string of measures to block potential conflicts of interest.

Appearing on Monday before the NSW parliament’s inquiry into the use and management of consulting services, Scyne took aim at the consulting sector over past poor management of conflicts of interest.

Scyne was formed after PwC Australia offloaded its government consulting operations to private equity player Allegro Funds in a $1 deal last year.

Allegro founding partner Adrian Loader said Scyne needed to split from PwC to escape the toxic reputation of the audit and consulting giant in the wake of revelations the firm’s tax practice had misused confidential government tax briefings.

He said the new firm “needed to eliminate the inherent conflicts of serving both the public and the private sector”.

“The way which we approached the whole acquisition was that there had to be a different model and we believe that the best model was that it had to be its own corporate, rather than a partnership, and therefore a different legal entity,” he said.

“It had to be kind of conflict-free from private sector companies because of the inherent conflict of interest.”

Scyne has repudiated PwC’s partnership model, instead adopting an ASX-style listed corporate governance model.

Mr Loader said this model benefited Scyne, but the Big Four consulting operators PwC, Deloitte, EY and KPMG faced a challenge in attempting to adopt similar oversight.

“We have taken on the ASX standards of governance and we’ve added another one, which is transparency as well,” he said.

“I think the spirit of them should be absolutely applied (to the other firms) because ultimately you want your providers of services to have good corporate governance themselves.”

Scyne managing partner Richard Gwilym said the consulting operation had been set up to “not pursue profit over purpose”.

“The ethics frameworks that we’ve put in place, we do believe, are different,” he said. “We are putting in place a balanced scorecard that will make sure that is lived through every action that we do.”

Mr Gwilym said Scyne, which caters to the public service and non-profits, had put in place cooling-off periods for public servants and former politicians joining its ranks

“There will be cooling-off periods for senior public servants, which means that they will not be able to work in the area that they have come from in government, to prevent any perceived conflicts of interest,“ he said. “We haven’t hired any since we have been established, but if the event occurs that we do, we will maintain those policies to ensure people have trust in the process.”