KPMG's Incoming Global CEO Shaped the Culture Now Under Investigation. This Week He Flew In to Fix It.
KPMG credits Gary Wingrove with 'nearly doubling revenue and reshaping the culture' during his eight years running the Australian firm.
Two of KPMG International’s most senior leaders arrived in Australia this week. Global chairman Bill Thomas and global COO Gary Wingrove are meeting partners and clients. The stated purpose: resetting “its approach to governance and culture.”
The second name is the one that should draw attention.
Gary Wingrove was CEO of KPMG Australia from 2013 to 2021. KPMG’s own announcement of his election as the next global chairman and CEO, effective October 1, credits him with “nearly doubling the firm’s revenue, profitability and headcount while reshaping its culture” during that period. He is, by the firm’s own account, the architect of modern KPMG Australia.
The culture he reshaped is the one now under ASIC investigation. Revenue he doubled is contracting under a nationwide government ban. His firm is preparing to cut a thousand jobs and slash partner pay by a fifth.
Wingrove left Sydney for London in late 2021, was appointed global COO, and in March was elected to succeed Thomas as global chairman and CEO. He takes over in October. Between now and then, the firm he built needs rescuing, and KPMG International has sent him to help provide it. The timing is extraordinary: the incoming leader of the entire KPMG network is flying into the jurisdiction where the most serious crisis in the network’s recent history is unfolding, and the crisis grew in the soil he tended.
To be clear: we do not know what Wingrove knew, when he knew it, or whether any of the alleged misconduct occurred with his awareness. What we know is that the systems of oversight, the whistleblower processes, the internal investigation protocols, and the partner accountability mechanisms that failed so comprehensively were built or operated during his eight-year tenure. KPMG’s own language for what he did is “reshaping the culture.” When a firm’s culture is under investigation, the person who shaped it owes an accounting of what was shaped and why.
What has happened since the CEO appointment
For readers following the KPMG Australia story, the pace of developments since we last wrote has been relentless. Here is what has changed.
The firm expelled former chief operating officer Eileen Hoggett from the partnership last week. Six weeks earlier, KPMG had announced that Hoggett would “step aside” and retire on her own terms. Then an external investigation by Allens confirmed that she had stored printed copies of confidential Lendlease board papers in a locker at KPMG’s Sydney office, shared them with colleagues, and lied about it when asked. New CEO John Sams wrote to the parliamentary committee acknowledging the whistleblower’s persistence and apologising for a “serious breach of trust.”
The locker allegation was one of the whistleblower’s original claims. KPMG ran three internal investigations into his allegations. All three “failed to substantiate any wrongdoing.” An external law firm, retained only after the CEO resigned and the chairman departed, found the evidence in weeks. We have written before about the distinction between an investigation that fails and an investigation designed to fail. KPMG’s own CEO has now confirmed which category these belonged to: “It is unacceptable that it has taken this long for the truth to come out, and that it has come to light in this manner.”
Victoria this week became the latest jurisdiction to bar KPMG from new government work, joining the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, and the ACT. The firm has signed a deed of undertaking not to bid until September 30. KPMG’s disclosed Victorian contracts total A$24 million; broader consortia involving the firm account for A$195 million more. The nationwide lockout is now complete. For a firm whose consulting revenue depends heavily on the public sector, client revenue has been switched off, state by state, over six weeks.
Macquarie Group used its annual general meeting last week to announce a formal inquiry into KPMG’s capacity to deliver its audit. Chair Glenn Stevens, who at last year’s AGM had dismissed questions about the KPMG appointment as “silly talk,” announced reviews of both KPMG’s ongoing capability and the integrity of its involvement in Macquarie’s audit tender process. A shareholder noted that Deloitte and EY had been eliminated early from the tender, leaving KPMG as the sole remaining candidate. That audit is reportedly worth approximately A$30 million per year. Westpac’s mandate, at roughly A$32 million, is also under review. Lendlease ended a 68-year audit relationship in June.
Inside the partnership, the numbers tell a consistent story. Partner distributions for FY26 face cuts of up to 20 per cent, with the AFR reporting average losses of A$717,000 per partner. Up to 1,000 staff may be cut from a workforce of roughly 9,000. Dozens of Canberra-based partners, whose practices depended on the government work now frozen, are reported to be looking for the exit. KPMG International has reportedly intervened to slow those departures, concerned that a wave of partner exits during audit season would leave the firm unable to meet its obligations to major clients.
The firm carries approximately A$557 million in debt with revenue covenants, and revenue has already declined from A$2.55 billion in FY23 to A$2.32 billion in FY25. If the government bans persist, the major audit mandates are pulled, and the partnership continues to haemorrhage experienced people, the revenue covenant question becomes a live one.
The KPMG International problem
Wingrove’s visit carries a complication that the firm’s reset narrative cannot accommodate.
The whistleblower did not only raise concerns with KPMG Australia. He contacted Bill Thomas and KPMG International’s Sydney-based global general counsel, Anne Collins, in May 2025, approximately a year after first raising them internally. KPMG International initially decided not to investigate. It retained Freshfields, and the magic-circle law firm endorsed the position that the global body could not launch a probe due to insufficient information from the whistleblower. KPMG International maintained throughout that its role was “oversight, not control” of member firms.
We have heard this before. When KPMG South Africa’s Gupta scandal erupted in 2017, KPMG International maintained the same line for months before eventually sending in executives and cutting hundreds of jobs. Australia is following the South African playbook with a lag of weeks rather than months. Under the independent-member-firm structure, accountability disappears into the gap between global and local: the global body sets standards but disclaims responsibility; the local firm follows its own governance but operates under the global brand.
A parliamentary hearing is scheduled for 14 August. KPMG International figures, including Collins and Wingrove, could be called to give evidence. The Treasury consultation on whether to break up the Big Four’s audit and consulting arms, or cap partnerships at 400, closes on 12 August.
The October question
The question nobody at KPMG International appears to be asking publicly is whether the global CEO appointment itself needs re-examining.
Wingrove was put forward by the global board in early March 2026. The whistleblower’s allegations were read into the Australian parliament on March 24. He was formally elected by the global council in mid-March. Either the board knew the Australian scandal was about to become public and elected him regardless, or it did not know what was happening inside the firm whose culture its candidate had spent eight years building. Neither answer is comfortable.
October 1 is two months away. Every week between now and then adds new confirmed evidence of failures that occurred during Wingrove’s tenure. If the parliamentary committee calls him on August 14, he will be asked what he knew about the information-sharing practices, the investigation protocols, and the partner accountability mechanisms at the firm he ran for eight years. KPMG International will need an answer that has been prepared before the question is asked, and that answer cannot be “I was in London by then.”
We are not suggesting Wingrove is personally implicated in the misconduct. We have said clearly that we do not know what he knew. But consider the standard KPMG would apply to its own clients. If a company were about to install a CEO whose eight-year tenure at a subsidiary coincided with the period now under regulatory investigation, KPMG’s own governance advisory practice would recommend an independent review of that tenure before the appointment took effect. The standard the firm sells to clients is the minimum it should apply to itself.
For the Australian partners watching this visit, the signal is hard to misread. Their income is dropping by A$717,000. Their colleagues in Canberra are looking for exits. Their former COO has been expelled for conduct that three internal investigations failed to find. And the person arriving to reset the culture is being promoted to lead the global network on the strength of a tenure that produced the culture under investigation. The system that created the failure is the same system that promotes from it.
Gary Wingrove may be the right person to lead KPMG globally. But “may be” is not a standard that survives the scrutiny this firm is under. Before October 1, KPMG International’s global board should commission an independent examination of his Australian tenure, conducted to the standard the firm would recommend to any client in the same position. If KPMG’s own governance logic does not demand that, the logic is broken.
Wingrove’s tenure at KPMG Australia (2013-2021) produced a firm that nearly doubled in size. The misconduct, the investigation failures, and the whistleblower retaliation all occurred during or shortly after that period. Should KPMG International’s global board commission an independent review of his tenure before he takes over on October 1? If a client asked KPMG the same question about their own incoming CEO, what would KPMG recommend?