KPMG Australia employees hop over to Deloitte

KPMG Australia has continued to lose personnel, and Deloitte has pocketed its local restructuring team, including national leader for turnarounds and restructuring Tim Mableson, alongside partners James Dampney and Peter Gothard and many of their colleagues, according to reports in the Australian Financial Review.

Mableson was a partner at KPMG Australia for seven years in Adelaide, where he was the administrator of McWilliam’s Wines Group, including trading operations, restructuring, and recapitalisation/sale. He was also the administrator of York Civil, a construction and civil engineering company.

Prior to that, he was a partner at restructuring provider Ferrier Hodgson for over two decades before the firm was acquired and merged into KPMG Australia in 2019.

Dampney has a similar resume, as he was also a partner at Ferrier Hodgson for a decade, where he was involved in restructuring assignments and trading insolvencies, before joining KPMG Australia in 2019 as partner – restructuring services following the merger.

Gothard held the longest tenure at Ferrier Hodgson of over 31 years, before joining KPMG Australia as partner in restructuring services, and he held the role of Asia Pacific lead partner.

Accounting Times contacted Deloitte about the new members joining the firm, but it did not provide any comments on the matter.

There were other departures at KPMG Australia in addition to the restructuring team, with CEO John Sams saying in a note to partners that the national managing partner of KPMG’s mid-market and private team Naomi Mitchell would leave the business, along with the division’s chief operating and technology officer Peter Bentley.

“I recently became aware of information suggesting that Naomi Mitchell and Peter Bentley were looking to leave the firm to start their own business and were approaching other partners to join them,” he said.

“I have since spoken to Naomi and Peter and agreed they will leave the firm. We are working with Naomi and Peter to agree the terms of their departure.”

Mitchell was a partner in the private enterprise team for nine years, while Bentley has been at KPMG Australia since 2018 in different roles. He began his role as partner and COO and CTO this year.

Sams said KPMG Australia partner Brett Mitchell will assume the role of acting national managing partner. Mitchell is national partner in charge – mid-market and private, tax, deals, and advisory.

The exodus has come as KPMG Australia is embroiled in the scandal of alleged audit misconduct, mishandling of confidential client information and using it to win corporate audit contracts, and the alleged mistreatment of the whistleblower who brought the allegations to light.

Former KPMG Australia chief strategy officer Dennis Krallis was placed in charge of implementing KPMG’s response to the scandal and integrity issues, strengthening governance, culture, and ethics, and improving controls.

However, Krallis also departed the firm recently and joined private-equity-backed competitor Synergy, according to the Australian Financial Review.

Krallis was brought in by former CEO Andrew Yates in August 2025 to advise clients in the energy sector. He was promoted to chief strategy officer just two months later. Krallis spent almost 29 years at Deloitte before joining KPMG Australia as partner.

Alongside the resignations, KPMG Australia is also looking to slash around 800 positions in order to cut costs.

Allegations of misconduct at KPMG Australia came to light in March this year, when Senator Deborah O’Neill aired “serious concerns” and allegations of misconduct from a KPMG whistleblower linked to the firm’s audit independence, misuse of confidential information, and tender integrity failures.

Several executives have departed the big four accounting firm since the allegations were revealed, including former CEO Andrew Yates, former chairman Martin Sheppard, former national managing partner of audit and assurance Julian McPherson, and audit partners Kim Lawry and Paul Rogers. Indeed, Lawry left after Westpac demanded she be removed from its file.

Former chief operating officer Eileen Hoggett was the only partner to be expelled from the partnership following evidence uncovered by Allens in its investigations into alleged audit misconduct. She has launched legal proceedings against KPMG in the Supreme Court of NSW.

During a grilling at a parliamentary hearing in August, Hoggett eventually admitted that she wrote an email to her personal assistant about confidential documents relating to the Lendlease audit, which were retained in a locker at KPMG Sydney’s office.

Several clients have also left KPMG Australia in the recent past, including ANZ, Lendlease, Macquarie Bank, and IAG.