KPMG chair and senior partners to quit firm over audit scandal fallout
KPMG Australia’s chair will leave the Big Four firm in the fallout of a scandal over misusing confidential client data to win audit contracts, along with two senior partners.
Martin Sheppard, who has held his position as chairman since 2023, will “shortly” resign from his position at KPMG to be replaced with an independent chair, staff at the firm have been told.
Sheppard will resign at the end of August, according to the Australian Financial Review, and will also step down from his position on the firm’s Asia-Pacific board, which he has held for 9 months.
Alongside Sheppard, who worked in the firm’s London office at the start of his career, senior partners Paul Rogers and Eileen Hoggett are also due to leave the firm.
Hoggett and Rogers were both involved in allegations from a whistleblower that confidential client information linked to some of Australia’s largest companies was used without permission to bid for new audit contracts.
“The decisions announced today are necessary and immediate,” interim chief executive Stan Stavros said in a statement, adding the firm “did not meet the standards expected of us, and we recognise the impact this has had on the whistleblower, our people, our clients, and the community.”
Stavros said KPMG is “determined to confront what went wrong, act transparently and ensure these failings are not repeated.”
The departures come almost a week after a parliamentary inquiry into the scandal and KPMG’s handling of the whistleblower’s allegations began in Australia, which Sheppard, Hoggett, and Rogers were a part of.
This follows KPMG Australia’s chief executive, Andrew Yates, and audit lead Julian McPherson stepping down at the end of May after the firm admitted to severely mishandling a whistleblower report on client confidentiality breaches.
City law firm denies ties to scandal
KPMG Australia said the City-headquartered law firm Ashurst was called in to investigate the allegations, which were made formally in May 2024, and had found “no wrongdoing”.
However, the firm on Friday denied its involvement in investigating the claims against the Big Four firm, as Ashurst partner Jane Harvey dismissed KPMG’s claims, telling the parliamentary inquiry in Australia that the law firm was never instructed to investigate the whistleblower’s claims.
“We were not engaged to undertake an investigation and we did not conduct one,” Harvey said.