Where to begin with the KPMG omnishambles, a governance scandal replete with more own goals than the World Cup and all the careful consideration of a season of Married at First Sight?An obvious starting point is to note that KPMG is unravelling barely three years since PwC blew itself up by leaking confidential Treasury briefings to business clients. The PwC tax saga contained the usual elements of high-level corporate misconduct: greed; anaemic governance; profound moral flexibility when it came to conflicts of interest; a cover up that was almost as bad as the crime. And while the story was broken by The Australian Financial Review in January 2023, soon enough it went mainstream culminating in a very public Senate inquiry.Subscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Fetching latest articles
First PwC, now KPMG: we can’t have another in a few years’ time
One lesson from the KPMG scandal is that not enough people took the PwC scandal seriously enough.
TL;DRAI
KPMG governance scandal erupts three years after PwC's Treasury leak, revealing systemic ethical failures in Big Four advisory. Tech leaders assessing M&A partners and governance frameworks now face a trust deficit across the entire Big Four ecosystem.
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