Illinois-born audit chief Cindy Hook has been elected Deloitte Australia’s new chief executive, making her the first woman in the nation’s history to lead a big four accounting firm.

Ms Hook, who transferred from Deloitte in the US five years ago, was elected by the firm’s partnership with a 97 per cent majority in a week-long voting process which closed on Thursday night.

Known for her striking red suits and Bruce Springsteen impersonations, Ms Hook has been central to Deloitte’s innovation agenda, dramatically altering the way audits are performed. She attracted senior talent to the audit team and snagged several blue-chip company audits in the past two years, including the $5 million Sims Metal Management audit off PwC. She also built up a $60 million advisory practice within audit, making it one of the most profitable divisions in the firm.

“The style Cindy has brought by ­differentiating audit has been extraordinary,” Deloitte chairman Keith Jones said. Her biggest challenge when she takes the chair from Giam Swiegers on February 1 will be maintaining momentum amid tough trading conditions for professional services firms.

Deloitte’s revenue was up 13 per cent in the six months to November, boosted by acquisitions.

Challenging the Status Quo

This year, Deloitte leapfrogged EY and KPMG to become the second-largest of the big four accounting firms in the country, with annual sales of $1.16 billion, ­trailing PwC by $400 million in sales.

This is a far cry from a decade ago, when Mr Swiegers took the helm of an unprofitable wreck.

“We’re more profitable as a business then we’ve ever been,” Mr Jones said.

The question on everyone’s lips now is: How will Deloitte continue to grow at its current rate, particularly as rivals begin to attack it from the flanks, picking off star performers and copying its most successful attributes?

Mr Jones admitted this will be a challenge. “We were the hunter and now we’re a little bit the hunted,” he said.

Ms Hook is not showing her hand all at once. “Giam taught me not to put the whole strategy out there when competing against others,” she said. “We’ve got momentum in the market. We’re not afraid to challenge the status quo.”

‘We’re going to have to move even faster’

She admits it will be challenging moving forward because “other firms are picking up on the acquisition trail”.

“We’re going to have to move even faster and make the right decisions.”

Deloitte would continue to grow through acquisitions, but “is not going to rush into anything”, she said.

Deloitte began the CEO succession process in March. Unlike other firms, Deloitte’s leadership race is a board-driven process rather than a popularity contest. Ms Hook was put forward as the board’s preferred candidate after a thorough sounding with equity and non-equity partners. Although Mr Swiegers’ leadership casts a long shadow, Ms Hook said she was taking over at a different time. “The firm is in a dif­ferent place and that calls for a different type of leader.”

Deloitte will make several more changes to its leadership team: chief strategist Gerhard Vorster will step down, along with chief operating officer Keith Skinner. There is some deliberation about whether the chief strategist role will continue to exist in its current form.

One person who has been guaranteed a seat on the executive is former PwC heavyweight Richard Deutsch, who will join Deloitte in February without knowing exactly what his role will be.

Mr Deutsch said he was drawn in by Deloitte’s creative and agile culture, attributes he sees as key to the survival of professional services firms.

‘We didn’t set out to appoint a woman as a leader’

Deloitte has become known for its willingness to embrace huge structural changes affecting the global accounting profession, even though this might mean deconstructing traditional profit models, radically changing service delivery and altering the composition of its workforce.

Clients are demanding new services, dished up in different ways, which is forcing firms into unfamiliar types of collaborative partnerships where contractual terms are sometimes fluid and based on gut instinct and goodwill.

Ms Hook prefers to play down the gender card, although already there has been an outpouring from women within the firm who view her as a role model.

Mr Jones said: “We didn’t set out to appoint a woman as leader, it’s merely an outcome of our strong diversity program.”

Ms Hook says her appointment is just as much about the environment created by men in leadership positions within the firm.

The reality, however, is that women in big four accounting firms constitute about 20 per cent of the senior executives.

This article was originally published on The Sydney Morning Herald 7th January. Read the original article here.