PwC makes senior recruiting coup

Accounting firm Pricewater-houseCoopers has substantially bolstered its Perth practice by recruiting two highly experienced tax advisers in Frank Cooper and David Lewis.

Messrs Cooper and Lewis will start with PwC early next year as senior partners in the corporate tax field.

Mr Cooper’s move to PwC has come as a surprise, since he left Ernst & Young just a few months ago to establish his own boutique practice, trading as Cooper Partners.

He was with Ernst & Young for three years and before that spent 28 years with Andersen, where he was managing partner of the Perth practice.

Mr Lewis previously worked for PwC before leaving seven years ago to work in the commercial sector, initially with Mobil and later with ChevronTexaco Corporation.

Most recently he was Chevron’s senior staff income tax analyst in the US and prior to that was their Australian tax manager.

PwC managing partner Andrew Edwards said it was rare for a professional services firm to recruit two senior partners with such experience at the same time.

“We’re absolutely delighted and I’m looking forward to 2006 with great optimism,” Mr Edwards said.

He said Mr Cooper would have a “markets leadership” role, utilising his business networks to strengthen PwC’s position in WA.

“I think he will be great for us and hopefully we’ll be great for him.”

Mr Edwards said Mr Lewis would focus on the oil and gas sector, which had been growing rapidly in Perth in recent years and a target of all of the professional services firms.

He believes PwC is already the market leader in that sector in WA.

“We think we are the largest player there,” Mr Edwards said.

Mr Cooper’s latest move continues the dispersion of Andersen’s former partners through Perth’s business community.

Of the tax partners, Keith Johns runs his own practice, KD Johns & Co, in West Perth, Mark Ceglinski is with Pitcher Partners after briefly running his own practice, and Harold Payne is with Ernst & Young, which absorbed the Andersen practice in Australia in 2002.

Among the audit partners, Derek Parkin works at the University of Notre Dame Australia, while Rob Kirkby and Gavin Buckingham remain with Ernst & Young.

Business consulting partners Iain Gerrard and Mike McNulty joined Deloitte in 2002 and are still there, while corporate partner Justin Willis works overseas.