‘My worst nightmare is going to a black-tie event. I can’t stand them’

When the UK chief executive of KPMG agreed to lunch with The Times, I hoped I was in line for a slap-up meal in a ritzy private members’ club. Instead, Jonathan Holt brings me to Bancone, an Italian restaurant a few minutes’ walk from his home near Borough Market in London.
This is not to criticise Bancone: it is a trendy spot for freshly made pasta and the food is good and reasonably priced. I had just assumed — wrongly — that the multimillionaire boss of one of the Big Four firms would choose somewhere swankier.
“I’m not into pomp and circumstance, it’s just not me,” he says. “I’m a simple, normal man. My worst nightmare is going to a black-tie event. I can’t stand them. It’s why we’re here and not some fancy members’ club.”
Perhaps his modesty is a product of his middle-class upbringing in the “fairly rough” Yorkshire city of Wakefield. His dad worked as an IT consultant for PwC, now one of Holt’s rivals, and his mother was an estate agent. With his two older sisters, the family lived on a new-build estate that Holt describes as a “bit like Brookside”. He went to the local state primary school but moved to a private secondary school.
“It’s an interesting contrast between a working-class city and a private school upbringing in a very middle-class home environment,” he says. “I do think I benefited from that, in the sense that I always feel like I can connect with lots of different people, because I saw all sides of life.”
After reading history at the University of Nottingham, he applied to join KPMG because he felt it would be “a great way to learn about business” and better equip him for the world of work. “If you want a general business education, chartered accountancy is a great way [to get it]. Even if you decide to go and do something quite different, it’s still a brilliant business qualification.”
The waiter comes with two starters — focaccia and what we assume is fried artichoke. The only problem is that we haven’t actually ordered anything yet. We’re both too polite to send them back so we tuck into them anyway.
Fried artichoke is not something either of us would have chosen, but it works surprisingly well with the romesco sauce. Holt divvies up the bread, offering to “play mum”. He grabs the waiter as he walks by and asks for the burrata, the starter he actually wanted. It comes out sharpish and by all accounts was worth the wait.
Holt joined KPMG in its Leeds office as a trainee auditor in 1994. A career in audit isn’t for everyone but he loved the job, so much so that he had to resit his second-year exams. “I probably got the balance wrong,” he explains. “I just really enjoyed the job and spent most of the time working and thought I could just get through the exams.”
Progress after that was rapid. He made senior manager “as fast as you could” and was promoted to partner in 2006 at the age of 32. That meant he was still a relatively junior partner when the financial crisis hit 18 months later.
“It was a baptism of fire,” he says, recalling how he took phone calls from clients sobbing down the phone to him as they watched their businesses go under.
The waiter returns to take the order for our mains. Holt has had everything on the menu, but his favourite is the silk handkerchiefs, or fazzoletti. “It’s basically pasta with a duck’s egg and walnuts,” he explains. “Sounds boring, but it’s nice.” I’ve never heard of it before, but I’m sold.
The waiter asks if we want a beer or wine with lunch. Holt likes a tipple after work but doesn’t drink at lunchtimes. “I don’t want to have a drink and then do my job in the afternoon — it’s just too tiring.”
His promotion to chief executive almost four years ago was somewhat unexpected. His predecessor Bill Michael left abruptly after reportedly telling staff to “stop moaning” about pandemic working conditions.
Holt thought he might be in the running a few years later, when Michael was due to step down, but he did not hesitate when the chance arose.
“If I didn’t think I was the best person to do it, I wouldn’t have done it,” he says with a quiet confidence. “Apart from tax, I’ve done almost every single job, so I was uniquely qualified [to be CEO]. I knew straight away where I was going, the trick then was to get everybody else on the same page.”
He doesn’t like the term firefighting, but much of his first three years was spent doing what could be described as that. The Financial Reporting Council, the industry regulator, was investigating the firm for bungling the audits of several companies, the most high-profile of which was Carillion, the now-collapsed construction contractor.
The FRC scolded KPMG for an array of “exceptional” failures in its Carillion audits and meted out a record £21 million fine this time last year. Although it didn’t happen on his watch, Holt has repeatedly apologised for the quality of some of the firm’s past work.
“I am proud of the way that we dealt with it,” he says. “We took responsibility for things we got wrong and I think that was the right way to do it.”
The mains arrive. Holt is anxious to see if I like the food; after all, he recommended both the restaurant and the choice of pasta. “It’s very creamy, isn’t it?” He’s right.
The conversation returns to the changes Holt has made since taking the top job, and improving the culture has been his No 1 priority. He has encouraged his auditors to more forcefully challenge clients and if they then get a bit shirty, Holt will get involved personally.
With the problems he faced at the start of his tenure now mostly under control, his attention can finally turn to the future. KPMG partners voted earlier this year to keep Holt in his role for another five years, which will take his tenure to eight years — the longest allowed. “The next stage has got to be growth, and it’s got to be technology, innovation, geographic expansion and artificial intelligence,” he says.
In terms of revenue, KPMG has been cut slightly adrift of the rest of the Big Four in the UK. Its most recent set of results show annual revenue of £2.96 billion — a fifth below EY, its nearest rival.
Holt says I’m “not comparing apples with apples”, pointing out that EY UK also encompasses the Irish firm. Similarly, PwC and Deloitte have operations outside of Britain too. The recent merger of KPMG UK and the group’s Swiss arm should help to bridge the gap, Holt expects, and he won’t rule out further moves.
He has, however, made progress with the all-important profit per partner metric. Since he took over, KPMG partners’ pay has risen by 37 per cent to an average of £786,000 last year; above EY and not as far behind PwC and Deloitte as it once was.
Not that his partners have had it all their own way. Holt has kept back some of the profits to fund investment in the business and even the money they do receive now comes with various clawback clauses. It’s his way of trying to make sure KPMG does not fall back into its old ways.
“It’s signalling to the partners that the way they behave and the quality of their work will affect their remuneration going forward,” he says. “We’ve come a long way and I’m very proud, but we can’t forget the lessons we’ve learnt.”
Age: 52Education: Silcoates School; University of Nottingham, BA (Hons) History; FCACareer: 1994 joined KPMG as a graduate; 2006 promoted to UK audit partner; 2013 Manchester office senior partner; 2017 UK head of financial services; 2019 UK head of audit; 2021 UK chief executive and senior partner; 2024 group chief executive and UK senior partner following merger of KPMG UK and KPMG Switzerland.Family: Three children from previous marriage. His partner Nicola Elliott is founder of NEOM Wellbeing
Bancone Borough YardsStill water x2 £3Orange juice £4Focaccia £4Fried artichoke £10Burrata £11.50Silk handkerchiefs x2 £22Fresh mint tea x2 £7Service charge £8.30TOTAL £69.80