EY chief Carmine Di Cibio to retire after failure of divestment plan

EY’s global chief executive Carmine Di Cibio has told partners he plans to retire next year, triggering a race to lead the accounting and consulting firm as his plan splits .

Di Cibio masterminded Project Everest, a once-in-a-generation breakthrough, but called off the deal in April after opposition from the firm’s US business leaders.

His future has been in doubt since the collapse of Everest, which will involve separating EY’s consulting arm and listing it on the stock exchange. Although he has continued to say that the deal was necessary to free consultants from conflict of interest rules, work on the doomed project cost more than $600 million and triggered a bitter infighting.

Di Cibio made it clear on Tuesday that he did not intend to step down immediately, but would instead oversee the organization through a lengthy transition lasting until the end of the next fiscal year in June 2024.

In a companion webcast, he said he planned to quit “after reaching mandatory retirement age”.

His initial four-year term was due to end this month, but EY had extended his term by two years, allowing him to continue beyond the firm’s mandatory retirement age of 60, so that he could head the division. which he argued would become a blueprint. for the other Big Four firms.

“I am proud of the bold vision we have set out in Project Everest,” he said. “The courage we displayed set the entire sector on a new course that will only be evident in the years to come. We challenged the status quo, we asked tough questions and we were bold in our ambitions. Actions like these will make us a better organization in the long run. Now is the time to bring in a new generation of leaders.”

Di Cibio said the succession process would begin in the next few months.

He took over as global chairman and chief executive in 2019, moving through the ranks of EY’s US business serving financial services clients including Goldman Sachs.

Had Everest gone ahead, he would have led a new publicly traded consulting business. The audit-focused firm will remain a private partnership under the EY brand, and its partners will receive cash benefits of up to four times their salary.

However, he misjudged the strength of opposition to the divestment in some quarters of the firm, particularly among high-ranking partners in the US audit business, who objected to spinning off a large part of EY’s tax advice business into the new consulting company. .

The firm is expected to report global revenue of more than $50bn for the 12 months to the end of June 2023, up from $36.4bn when he took over in 2019.