Former Telstra chair John Mullen joins PwC spinoff

PwC spinoff Scyne Advisory has appointed former Telstra chairman John Mullen as its chair in a bid to further underline its credentials as an independent consulting group.

Mullen, who left Telstra’s board last month and now chairs Brambles and Treasury Wines, will help oversee the recruitment of an independent board for Scyne, which commenced business on Monday as a stand-alone entity.

“Somebody defined this as a very large start-up, which appealed to me,” Mullen said.

But he also was attracted by Scyne’s uniqueness in the sector as a government consultancy that is no longer burdened by the conflict of catering to private sector clients as well.

“It’s pretty unique in one’s career to get the opportunity to participate in the birth of a new vertical within an industry with a very different approach to an old problem,” he said.

“Scyne Advisory is a new business, already operating at scale, that is well positioned to disrupt the industry.”

Scyne is starting life with about 1400 staff, including partners, and $100 million worth of funding from private equity group Allegro.

Allegro co-founder Adrian Loader emphasised the need for the new governance model to help differentiate Scyne from the rest of the sector.

“Because people were worried that we are just a kind of PwC rebadge, we had to come up with a very different governance and values framework,” Loader said.