‘If you look over there, you can see the new children’s hospital, which looks really impressive, the size of it,” says KPMG managing partner Ryan McCarthy pointing off into the distance as we look west from a terrace that runs the full length of the eighth floor of a new office block that the Big Four firm is putting the finishing touches to before it moves to its new headquarters in October.
We have walked, hard hats and hi-vis jackets in hand, from KPMG’s existing HQ on nearby Stokes Place, where the firm has been located since 1983. This move will allow KPMG to house up to 3,000 staff under one roof, reducing from 65 floor plates at multiple locations in Dublin to its new space at Harcourt Square.
There will be 2,500 official workspaces, but various other nooks, crannies and ledges mean it could host up to 3,000 KPMG workers on a given day if required, McCarthy says.
The professional services firm has spent more than €100 million “gross” on fitting out the office with the latest high-tech kit, an in-house “business school”, modern restaurant facilities for staff and guests, and flexible boardroom and meeting spaces, along with the usual array of desks and other office furniture, and brand new carpets. And two large terraces that offer magnificent views across our capital city.
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It’s a “generational” investment and a significant statement by the firm to staff and clients.
As we arrive, large bins of rubble are being removed from the lift and heavy-duty construction work is still being undertaken on the upper floors.
As it happens, McCarthy is the only person with a dedicated office in the new block, where we plonk ourselves for a chat.
“That wasn’t my decision,” he says by way of defence. “It was decided before I took over.”
In a world of hot desking and hybrid working, other partners and directors will have to book an office each day, although McCarthy says there will be “enough for everyone”.
Before Covid hit in March 2020, McCarthy says staff attended the office on average 3.4 days a week, being off-site with clients the balance of the time. This figure is running at 2.3 days a week. “So we’ve lost a day [per week, in the office],” he says, adding that graduates are expected to attend four days per week.
From the autumn, he says KPMG will push for graduates to attend the office “all the time”.
“If the graduates are effectively in all the time, the managing teams need to be here all of the time, and the partners, too. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I would certainly like to get [the average] back to north of three days a week if I could.
“I don’t like to use that word mandatory but I certainly would be thinking more full-time than half-time, to be honest. If you’re 22,23 or 24, going to work every day, you can go for a pint afterwards and socialise and learn from brilliant people.”
This year, KPMG will hire up to 350 graduates, according to McCarthy. That’s down from a peak of 450 during Covid.
Despite this reduction, McCarthy insists that KPMG is the “biggest recruiter and trainer of trainee accountants and the biggest trainer of tax advisers”.
“I’m determined that KPMG will be a big recruiter of graduates. You can’t invest in tax advisers if you don’t train them.”
KPMG Ireland operates as an all-island firm, with revenues last year of €632 million.
Like many of its peers, for one reason, or another, it has trimmed its workforce in the past couple of years as the post-Covid boom in activity has dissipated.
Coming out of Covid, KPMG had “just over” 4,000 staff, he says, whereas now it has between 3,800 and 3,900. That’s a reduction of 5-6 per cent, which he puts down to “good management of the business rather than anything structural”.
But unlike some of its peers in the KPMG global network, the Irish firm has “no plans to let any partners go” and “no plans in terms of downsizing from where we are now”.
Which brings us to the impact of artificial intelligence on the firm. “There are technological changes and efficiencies that have happened over the past five or six years. And all of the professional services firms are using offshore delivery centres. It’s a balancing act, but I’m still keen on KPMG being active on recruitment.”
At present, artificial intelligence (AI) is deployed within KPMG at a variety of levels. Staff have access to Microsoft Copilot, while audit and other units have AI embedded into their workflow platforms.
“Some of that is proprietary stuff we develop ourselves and some of it with the help of others. A couple of weeks ago we announced a big global deal with Anthropic and we will make it available to our people and to our clients. There’s a huge amount going on.”
Trust is a huge issue with the deployment of AI, and KPMG was last week forced to take down a global report on thought leadership that included AI hallucinations.
“There was a global report, a piece on thought leadership that a number of firms put on their websites; we were one of them. A firm went and tested the veracity of that report in terms of the references in it and there was a story in the FT last week. It was brought to our attention and we took that report down straight away.
“Clearly, it was not the standard we would hold ourselves to at all. The global firm is looking into it [and] we locally are also looking into it.”
There was some local content added to the report that was published on the Irish website. Was he embarrassed by it?
“Yeah, it’s not a good look, and from our point of view, the trust agenda is core to our brand. We invest tens of millions in that every year. It’s just non-negotiable. We need to stay laser focused that all of our processes that are AI-enabled, that we’re constantly checking the veracity of those on an ongoing basis.
“It’s one of those things where if it happens once, that’s fine, but from a reputation point of view, we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again. There’s an investigation ongoing and we need to get to the bottom of that and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
He says the “localised” content passed muster, with no hallucinations.
On the wider AI point, he is “excited” by the opportunities that it presents and while it will inevitably bring efficiencies, he’s not sure it will lead to a “dramatic” reduction in employees.
Looking out 10 years, what impact will AI have had on KPMG Ireland?
“We are in the foothills of AI at the minute. But the reality is that our future will always be tethered to the future of the Irish economy.
“We might have close to 4,000 people, but that might be a delivery centre that we own or co-share close to home or in Europe or the Philippines or whatever. But the honest answer is that I really don’t know. And it’s something that I spend an awful lot of time thinking about and trying to work through.”
One change that he thinks is possible is that graduates might be able to qualify in half the time it takes now, with the correct training programmes.
McCarthy joined KPMG in 1996, taking over as managing partner in May of last year, succeeding Seamus Hand in the role.
Hailing from Crosshaven in Cork, McCarthy was one of three children. His father ran several factories in his career, latterly as chief executive of carpet maker Curistan in Youghal, Co Cork.
His mother had her own curtain-making business, “up until relatively recently, actually”, while also raising the children. “She had a workspace over her garage, it was initially my grandmother and then her, always with a project on the go.”
McCarthy initially thought about a career in law as a career but ended up doing a BComm in UCC.
He applied for roles with the then Big Six accounting firms, meeting KPMG’s “legendary” HR director at the time, Geoffrey Perrin. “He was a great character. Within 20 minutes with Geoffrey I was sold on KPMG.”
He joined as an auditor in September 1996. “Two weeks in the door and I was on the Bailey’s audit, and four weeks in the door I was on the Fyffes’ audit. I loved getting that exposure.”
He became a partner in 2010, as Ireland headed into its EU-IMF bailout, going on to do a “huge amount of work on Irish Water”, which was set up to collect domestic water charges but became a political football and a lightning rod with the public for austerity. The Government eventually scrapped the charges.
“Remember, the State had no money and for a very low level of domestic water charge, Irish Water could have come off the Government balance sheet and had a pot of €2 billion, €3 billion to invest in infrastructure. From a business point of view, I found the whole thing deeply frustrating and if I aired that view [with friends or family] I got a lot of flak at the time.”
More recently, McCarthy was involved as an audit partner with Smurfit Westrock, Flutter and Total Produce/Dole as they listed on the US stock market.
His last piece of audit work was in February last year, when he signed off on Cairn Homes’ accounts, before his transition period as managing partner began on March 1st. He took the reins on May 1st.
McCarthy arrived in Dublin on a Sunday 30 years ago to work for KPMG. A couple of days later, he ventured down to Lansdowne rugby club, where he would play for 10 years and would indirectly meet his wife.
“About 18 months in, we had a match in Athlone against Buccaneers and went on to Galway for a night out and I met a girl there who, as it turned out, was from Dalkey and the rest is history.
“At one point, we had a debate about where we’d live. I suggested we move south and was thinking of Cork and she was thinking Killiney and that’s where we ended up.”
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When he started in KPMG, did he ever think he’d become the ultimate boss? “No, I did not. When I became partner I was passionate about wanting to help run the firm.
“Managing partners have terms and I knew when Seamus’s time would be up. This was two years ago, I was turning 50 and from an age and experience point of view, it worked for me. It was the right time in my career to try something different. I was lucky enough to get the role, and I love it, it’s a great job.”
“It’s the challenge of coming up with a strategy, executing a strategy, dealing with the cut and thrust, and I’m a member of the global board, which gives you a great perspective on international professional services.”
McCarthy won’t say it out loud but, all things being equal, he is likely to serve a second term, which would bring him to six years in total.
A key goal for his time in charge is to improve gender balance at the highest levels of the firm. At present, just 23 per cent of the firm’s partners are women, rising to 30 per cent among principals and managing directors.
“I really would love to get to 50-50,” he says. “That last push to [senior] promotion can coincide with people temporarily leading the workforce because they start a family and those sort of things. We’re doing a [piece of work to dig into that in a bit of detail.
“We need to go a bit harder in terms of mentoring, in terms of coaching, in terms of support.”
McCarthy says that over the next three to five years, he would like to get the number of women in the top tiers (partner, principal and managing director levels) of the firm to “north of 40 per cent”.
“There’s a bit of work for us to do, but that’s the kind of ambition that we need to demonstrate.”
CV
Name: Ryan McCarthy.
Job: Managing partner, KPMG.
Age: 52.
Lives: Killiney.
Family: Married with five children, four girls and one boy ranging in age from 22 down to 12.
Hobbies: “I love sport. Being from Cork, hurling and football and Munster rugby.”
Something we might expect: “I love current affairs, politics and business generally.”
Something that might surprise: “The best day or half day I could spend would be in the garden. My wife is brilliant at gardening and is the brains behind it. I’m the heft. I love to unwind in it.”
Leadership style: “I like to think that I lead from the front. In a partnership, you need to be able to build consensus so my style is clarity around where we’re going, don’t ask anyone to do what I wouldn’t do myself, and to build consensus to get there.”
