KPMG Australia has announced a major leadership reshuffle as it prepares to eliminate up to 400 additional jobs, bringing the number of positions affected by its latest restructuring programme to nearly 800.
The changes come as the firm continues to grapple with the consequences of its confidential-information scandal, which has triggered senior leadership departures, lost audit business, restrictions on government contracts and mounting financial pressure.
Chief executive John Sams has appointed three senior partners to key executive roles as he attempts to stabilise the business.
New leadership appointments
Gayle Dickerson has been appointed chief operating officer and chief financial officer, combining two roles previously held by Eileen Hoggett and Sams respectively.
Dickerson, who has led KPMG’s deal advisory and infrastructure business since July and previously headed its turnaround and restructuring practice, will oversee the latest workforce reductions.
Ben Travers, head of tax and legal, has been appointed deputy chief executive. A former contender for the top job, Travers has worked alongside Sams on managing the scandal since July.
Jeff Cook, previously regional head of quality and risk management and a member of KPMG’s global risk group, will become chief risk officer. Senior partner Pete Turner will replace Dickerson as head of deal advisory and infrastructure.
The appointments follow the departures of former chief executive Andrew Yates, chairman Martin Sheppard and head of audit Julian McPherson.
Hoggett, whom KPMG dismissed following findings concerning the sharing of confidential Lendlease board documents, has denied wrongdoing and is suing the firm.
Job cuts approach 800 in two rounds
The latest plans to eliminate up to 400 positions follow a major restructuring announced in August under the codename Project Vector.
That programme involved 27 partners and approximately 360 employees, primarily from consulting and internal business services, representing about 5% of KPMG Australia’s workforce.
The Project Vector restructuring was introduced against a backdrop of falling consulting revenues, reduced government spending and the escalating costs of KPMG’s governance crisis.
The latest restructuring, internally described as the reset, is expected to affect another 400 employees, mainly in consulting and business services, by the end of November.
If implemented in full, the two rounds would affect approximately 787 partners and employees, equivalent to around 9% of KPMG Australia’s workforce.
The contraction began well before the scandal became public.
During the 2024–25 financial year, KPMG’s workforce reportedly shrank by 635. In February 2026, the firm also unveiled plans to offshore approximately 200 executive assistant positions to the Philippines, with most of the proposed departures scheduled for April through June.
Those earlier reductions formed part of a broader cost-cutting effort driven by declining advisory demand and are not linked to the current crisis, but they illustrate how extensively KPMG has been reducing its Australian cost base.
The pressure is visible in the financial results. KPMG Australia’s revenue has fallen for three consecutive years, from A$2.55 billion in FY2023 to A$2.26 billion in FY2026.
Consulting revenue fell 18% in FY2025 and another 16.9% in FY2026, leaving the business substantially smaller than it was two years earlier.
Lost clients and abandoned audit appointments
The firm has also suffered significant commercial setbacks since the scandal erupted publicly in March.
Lendlease ended its longstanding audit relationship with KPMG after revelations that confidential information from its board documents had been improperly accessed and shared during the firm’s pursuit of other audit engagements.
In August, Macquarie Group abandoned its planned appointment of KPMG as auditor, retaining PwC instead. Macquarie’s board cited concerns about KPMG’s capacity to deliver the audit following departures from the proposed engagement team, as well as its culture, including the transparent disclosure of issues.
The decision deprived KPMG of a major audit mandate it had already won. PwC had received approximately A$93.9 million for audit, audit-related and other services to Macquarie Group and its managed funds in FY2026, illustrating the scale of the business at stake.
KPMG has also faced the loss of longstanding audit relationships with ANZ and Insurance Australia Group. Both companies cited auditor tenure in their decisions to change firms, rather than attributing those decisions directly to the misconduct scandal.
The combined developments nevertheless leave KPMG facing the loss of established audit relationships and future revenue opportunities at a time when its financial position is already under pressure.
Government contracting restrictions extended
The greatest immediate constraint on KPMG’s ability to replace lost revenue may be the restrictions on its government business.
The Australian Department of Finance has extended KPMG’s exclusion from new Commonwealth government contracting until 28 February 2027.
The restrictions, initially imposed in June, cover new federal procurement processes and certain subcontracting arrangements. Existing contracts may continue, with extensions and variations subject to the applicable approvals.
Western Australia has also extended its restrictions on new KPMG engagements until the end of February 2027. New South Wales introduced its own procurement restrictions in June, while Victoria subsequently agreed to a pause on new engagements.
The consequences extend beyond preventing KPMG from securing replacement work. The firm has already lost government contracts.
In July, the Australian Public Service Commission terminated an A$1.27 million contract under which KPMG was to provide ethics and leadership training to approximately 300 senior public servants.
The cancellation came amid scrutiny of the firm’s handling of whistleblower allegations and failures in its own ethical culture.
Commonwealth government work generated A$207.1 million for KPMG in FY2026, approximately 9.5% of the firm’s total revenue. Not all of that business is immediately at risk, because existing contracts can continue, but the restrictions materially constrain the firm’s ability to win new work.
The cost of rebuilding KPMG
The new appointments place Dickerson, Travers and Cook at the centre of KPMG’s attempt to restore its financial stability, governance and credibility.
But the scale of the challenge extends beyond changes to the executive team.
The firm faces declining consulting revenues, a restricted government contracting pipeline, the loss of important audit relationships and the cost of implementing governance reforms following independent reviews that exposed serious weaknesses in its ethical culture and treatment of whistleblowers.
The financial consequences of Project Vector also raise questions about the contrast between the consequences for senior figures implicated in the scandal and those borne by partners and employees uninvolved in the misconduct.
With hundreds more positions now at risk, those questions have become increasingly pressing.
KPMG is seeking to rebuild trust and restore profitability. For a substantial part of its workforce, however, the cost of that rebuilding effort may be the loss of their jobs.
This is part of Big4News’ continuing coverage of the KPMG Australia Audit Leak Scandal.
KPMG Australia Audit Leaks Scandal
The KPMG Australia audit-leaks scandal, which erupted publicly in March 2026, has developed from a whistleblower’s contested allegations into an established pattern of misconduct, investigative failure and governance weakness. It represents one of the most serious integrity crises to hit the Big Four in Australia since the PwC tax leaks affair.
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About the author: Claudine Cassar is the founder and editor of Big4News, covering audit, consulting, regulation and governance across Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG.