Chairman’s challenge: Finding a cleanskin to head the KPMG board

July 13, 2026 — 3:00pm

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Short of kissing babies, Michael Ebeid’s roadshow campaign to win support for his candidacy for chairman of KPMG reads a lot like a political campaign, including a face-to-face tour of all the firm’s large Australian offices.

The chairman’s whistle-stop whistleblower tour will finish this week with Hobart, Adelaide and Perth. But he will need to pay for the excess baggage he is carrying thanks to his role in the KPMG scandal.

The many miles he has covered is proportional to the level of anger among the KMPG partners he needs to convince that he is the right person for the chair role.

The trouble is Ebeid’s candidacy has been tainted by his membership of a KMPG board that dismissed a whistleblower’s allegations that the firm had shared confidential client information to win new audit contracts, and that it subsequently outsourced a whitewashed legal........

© The Age