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CPA Australia reels from cost overruns, exec departures
Last week, yet another executive bowed out of CPA’s Southbank headquarters, resigning a mere four months into her role.
Myriam RobinRear Window editorCPA Australia definitely has one thing going for it these days, which is that it’s not run by Alex Malley.
But Malley, it must be said, excelled at entrenching and maintaining his allies throughout the organisation.
His replacement – ex-Macquarie Banker Andrew Hunter, who will leave early next year after five years in the role – doesn’t appear to do that half as well.
CPA Australia CEO Andrew Hunter will depart in March. Rob Homer
Last week, yet another executive bowed out of CPA’s Southbank headquarters in Melbourne. Chief learning and innovation officer Claire Hopkins resigned a mere four months into her role in favour of a job at Melbourne University. One imagines she started interviewing shortly after setting up her desk.
The week before news of her resignation, engagement data from the part of the business she led (for several weeks) was leaked. It suggested a mere 15 per cent of employees in the all-important education arm were actively engaged.
These survey results, CPA told us on Monday, related to “one part of CPA Australia that was going through a restructure at the time”. Still, who would have guessed the disengagement spread quite so far up the org chart.
The manner of Hopkins’ departure from key management may be, in tenure, the most dramatic, but it isn’t unheard of. In the past three years, no fewer than nine executives listed in annual reports have left the organisation, many with hefty termination payments.
This has been noted because cash is decidedly short at CPA right now. In FY22 (the last year for which accounts are public), the body made a $31.4 million loss. Since then, it’s embarked on a major redundancy round as it grapples with substantial cost overruns in two key projects.
One of these is a member management and finance platform, which insiders say was budgeted at $23 million but is so far tracking closer to $40 million.
Contracted to deliver the project, funnily enough, is none other than big four consultancy Deloitte, many of whose employees would be CPA members.
Many accountants grumble they don’t get value for money from their yearly CPA fee. Those at Deloitte can’t be too unhappy, although there are better ways to keep members sweet.
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