PwC ignored warnings to green light Seymour’s CEO bid, inquiry hears
Tom Seymour, who was head of tax at the time of the firm’s confidentiality breaches, was allowed to run for the top job despite opposition from executives and the ATO.
PwC’s governance board allowed Tom Seymour, head of tax at the time of the confidentiality breaches, to run for CEO despite warnings from its executives and the ATO, a parliamentary committee has heard.
Former general counsel Meredith Beattie told the consulting inquiry on Friday that ahead of the firm’s 2020 leadership elections, the board was warned by herself, then-CEO Luke Sayers and the ATO’s second commissioner that Seymour’s candidacy could be compromised due to ongoing scrutiny of PwC’s tax practice.
Despite these warnings, the governance board ultimately decided to allow Seymour to proceed to the next round of the selection process.
Seymour would go on to be voted in by the partnership, holding the top job from May 2020 until was ousted over links to the tax leaks scandal three years later in May 2023.
Beattie said then-CEO Sayers had a meeting with ATO second commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn where “Mr Hirschhorn had raised the fact that it would be problematic if Mr Seymour were to become the CEO of PwC, because he would have a conflict issue that [other candidates] would not have”.
“Mr Sayers called me shortly after the discussion … and he expressed he was surprised at the tenor of the discussions he had in terms of Mr Hirschhorn’s concerns about Mr Seymour,” she said.
Seymour was managing partner of PwC’s tax and legal practice from 2012 to 2016 before becoming the head of the broader financial advisory division and tax leader of Asia Pacific and the Americas.
Under his leadership, the ATO began investigations into the tax practice’s culture and aggressive schemes. PwC responded by inappropriately claiming legal professional privilege over tens of thousands of documents to frustrate the agency.
Days after Sayers’ phone call with Hirschhorn, Beattie said Sayers urged chair Peter van Dongen to consider Seymour’s candidacy “very carefully” in a board meeting.
“[Sayers] also raised a consideration about how this could, in fact, be managed if Mr Seymour were to become the CEO and if the conflict position that Mr Hirschhorn had foreshadowed were to arise,” she said.
She then recounted a “forceful” and “robust” phone call between herself, Sayers and van Dongen.
“There was then a call on a Saturday. It was around the middle of the day. I was on the call, Mr Sayers was on the call, and the chairman was on the call,” she said.
“And as a result of that, the call ended on the basis that Mr Sayers would go and speak to Mr Seymour.”
But Beattie was then advised by then-chief risk officer Nadia Carlin that the selection committee had decided Seymour would go through the next round.
The parliamentary joint committee previously heard evidence that none of the partners that voted in Seymour were informed that there had been concerns around his candidacy.
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