As PwC attempts to win back the lost trust of Australians following the tax leak scandal, it’s telling that a woman is now in the acting CEO role and is issuing the apology.
It’s telling that women have been calling out this mess – including Labor Senator Deborah O’Neil and The Greens Senator Barbara Pocock.
And it’s telling that two women from the PwC board have resigned, and are now taking on some of the public scrutiny regarding just how deep this disgusting betrayal of the Australian public actually runs.
Meanwhile, it’s telling that the nine partners who were stood down by PwC on Monday regarding the leak are yet to be named. There are believed to be dozens of partners with at least some knowledge of what went on, given their names appear on emails related to using confidential Australia tax reform information to help win clients.
And it’s telling that a quick scan of the partners and leadership teams across the tax practice (you can find them here) reveals that this is an area that doesn’t have anywhere close to the gender balance of other PwC teams, especially as you dig into relevant tax capabilities that might be associated with this scandal.
Women are becoming the face of the public scrutiny of PwC, but women did not hold the leadership positions at the height of this scandal — during the years that the firm used confidential information about Australia’s tax reforms (acquired as a government client) to help drum up business with and support other clients in paying less tax.
Former CEO Luke Sayers held the CEO role from 2012 until May 2020, covering the period at the firm that has been called into question. Sayers is also president of the Carlton Football Club, as you can guess he’s well-connected across corporate and political Australia.
Sayers ran the tax and legal practice at PwC before being elected CEO. His CEO successor – Tom Seymour — also ran this tax practice, before taking on the CEO role in May 2020. Seymour stood down a few weeks ago.
Also once in leadership in the tax team was Peter Collins, the man who has so far taken the “one bad egg” heat for the scandal, who leaked secret government intelligence that was later used to help clients sidestep new multinational tax avoidance laws in 2016. He was PwC’s former international tax leader, and has since been deregistered by the tax practitioner board for two years following its finding that Collins had “failed to act with integrity, as required under his professional, ethical, and legal obligations.” Good thing Collins can return to offering advice in the mid 2020s according to this board, but in the meantime the Australian Federal Police is investigating.
Until now, it’s mostly been Seymour and Collins whose faces we’ve been seeing — but the culture hardly ends there.
Now, two other names have been associated with the scandal and are having their faces splashed across the front pages – likely on account of their tenure on PwC’s board of partners and their own decision to resign, rather than being directly involved themselves. Those names are two women: Tracey Kennair, chair of the governance board, and Paddy Carney, chair of PwC governance board risk. Both made the decision to step aside from their roles, with the announcement on monday. And like the Australian Financial Review put it today, we also “can’t help but notice it’s two women who received the most public drubbing on Monday.”
We also can’t help but notice the depth of Kristin Stubbins’ potentially impossible difficult task ahead, at a firm that has never before had a woman appointed as its Australian CEO.
On Monday, Stubbins apologised to the community and the Australian government for “betraying the trust placed in us” and “breaching your confidentiality”.
She also apologised to clients, and to the 10,000 or so employees of PwC – at least those not involved in the scandal who she said have been, “unfairly impacted”.
And she shared her commitment to clean up the mess.
“I am fully committed to taking all necessary actions to re-earn the trust of our stakeholders, and as we work through this process, I am committed to being fully transparent,” she said.
It’s a pretty big apology to have to make in your first couple of weeks in the role, possibly one of the biggest such apologies in corporate Australian history. But it’s not one that’s been accepted either, The Greens have called for all government contracts with PwC to be terminated, while calls for everyone involved in these tax leaks to be named continue. This open letter doesn’t make everything ok, nor do a number of partners walking out the door mean accountability has occurred.
Stubbins role will also involve addressing morale at the firm which, as most can imagine, has reportedly been pretty low, given the many departments that would have absolutely nothing to do with this work.
So Stubbins is mopping up a mess internally and externally. She’s taking the public scrutiny – while her predecessor left weeks ago and the CEO before him, left in 2020 and doesn’t appear to be saying much at all right now. Stubbins may then get the additional unenviable task of trying to build back the firm.
Leave it for a woman to finally be appointed to such a role, just as the role becomes the public face of trying to explain what happened, and win back trust from the government, the Australian public and the firm’s clients – while retaining a sense of positivity and optimism in the future for the sake of the thousands of staff who remain.
Meanwhile, with an independent review of the firm’s operations and culture to be completed later on in the year, PwC has finally committed to publishing the results of the review in full, after previously only committing to giving us a summary of the key recommendations.
By ‘us’, let’s remember that we’re referring to the Australian taxpaying public who have funded a chunk of the tax division of this firm, and its culture. PwC currently has more than $200 million in government contracts. And to be fair to the many thousands of PwC employees who have absolutely nothing to do with this betrayal, they deserve to receive the full report also and trust that their employer really is doing everything possible to be transparent and committed to cultural change.