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PwC spinoff Scyne Advisory has appointed former Telstra chairman John Mullen as its chair in a bid to further underline its credentials as an independent consulting group.
Mullen, who left Telstra’s board last month and now chairs Brambles and Treasury Wines, will help oversee the recruitment of an independent board for Scyne, which commenced business on Monday as a stand-alone entity.
“Somebody defined this as a very large start-up, which appealed to me,” Mullen said.
Former Telstra chairman John Mullen likened PwC spinoff Scyne to “a very large start-up”. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
But he also was attracted by Scyne’s uniqueness in the sector as a government consultancy that is no longer burdened by the conflict of catering to private sector clients as well.
“It’s pretty unique in one’s career to get the opportunity to participate in the birth of a new vertical within an industry with a very different approach to an old problem,” he said.
“Scyne Advisory is a new business, already operating at scale, that is well positioned to disrupt the industry.”
Scyne is starting life with about 1400 staff, including partners, and $100 million worth of funding from private equity group Allegro.
Allegro co-founder Adrian Loader emphasised the need for the new governance model to help differentiate Scyne from the rest of the sector.
“Because people were worried that we are just a kind of PwC rebadge, we had to come up with a very different governance and values framework,” Loader said.
Allegro Funds co-founder Adrian Loader.Credit: James Brickwood
“Our goal is to create a differentiated ethical framework to our competitors.”
Loader said Scyne had been well received in its interactions with government to date.
“We’ve got lots of capability, we’ve got tech capability, we’ve got a lot of other types of services which are actually in high demand,” he said.
“We think that the government is going to interact with us in the same way they use other consultants. And that’s really all we’re asking for.”
Scyne was sold by PwC to Allegro Funds for $1 to rescue the business from the tax scandal engulfing the big four consultancy giant.
PwC’s government consulting arm generated $680 million in revenue from the federal and state governments last year.
The frequency of work is expected to drop significantly this year due to the effective ban from government business following the PwC tax scandal.
Scyne has already made significant progress with government. Last month it was given the green light by the Department of Finance to bid for service contracts with government departments.
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