You’ll recall last week we reported some good news and some bad news from Big4 firm KPMG:
- Good News: many staff would be receiving iPhone 4s;
- Bad News: allegations surfaced that the firm had settled a dispute with a consultant arising out of allegations that she suffered sexual and emotional abuse from a partner.
In relation to the bad news, an anonymous KPMG spy sent us the following comments:
I heard recently that at KPMG one young senior consultant got paid out because of long term sexual and emotional abuse by a Partner that ruined her career with the firm. They are both no longer at KPMG and he is now rumoured to be with Deloitte. These things are apalling, yet they are allowed to happen everyday.
We received the following comments in relation to our earlier post:
Hi, A few clarifications about your recent post re: the secret sexual harassment settlement at KPMG. The person, who gave you the tip, clearly has 3rd party information, probably from the girl involved.
1. Having worked with the ‘victim’ during this period, she is about as far from being a victim as Hitler is likely to receive the World Jewish Congress award for the advancement of Jewish Interests.
2. The real career that was ruined was the partner in question – admittedly by his own foolishness in allowing himself to get into such a position.
3. In my opinion, the allegations were only made once the employee fell out of the partner’s favour which had to do with work performance and direct complaints from clients. I am told complaints from senior staff about her performance had been ignored up until this point.
4. Allegedly she pulled the same stunt at Deloitte where she worked before KPMG (which in and of itself does not mean anything, but from such a pattern, inferences can be made about the type of person in question).
Nobody I’ve spoken to who knows the parties involved and knows the background to the situation believes that she was a victim of sexual harassment.
Any other KPMG spies care to comment?
Allegations of sexual impropriety/harassment are nothing new among the Big4: you’ll recall of course that former PwC partner Christina Rich settled a very public spat with PwC over allegations of sexual harassment. Rich alleged that fellow PwC partner Stuart Edwards:
placed notes under the door at the Santa Monica conference [asking] “Christina, would you like to come to my room to carry on the conversation in the bar?”, and “Christina, I have been knocking on your door – please see in my room if you are awake.” [Mr Edwards also allegedly] adopted a practice of kissing her hello and goodbye – against her objections.
It was speculated that Ms Rich settled with PwC for over $5million.
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I’m very surprised you don’t publish more stories like this from the big 4. I’m at Pwc and this is rampant. Most of the partners involved in the Christina rich saga are still present and clearly haven’t learnt their lessons. The only thing they’ve learnt is to move their prey from fellow female partners to first and second grads. They’ve learnt the grads are easier and cheaper to buy off compared with partners.
Jesus I did a google of this Christina Rich and she doesn’t even look worth sexually harrassing!