EY CFO Jamie Miller Quits in less than 6 Months

Jamie Miller, who assumed the role of global Chief Financial Officer at EY in January, decided to leave the accounting firm after less than six months due to the abandonment of its plan to spin off its consulting business. Miller, an experienced finance executive who was recruited from the commodities trading firm Cargill, had been earmarked to become the CFO of the consulting business had the spin-off materialized. Her resignation in June, which has not been previously reported, occurred shortly after EY called off the breakup.

EY had invested over a year and $600 million in preparing for the breakup, a move that global leaders believed would drive growth in both segments of its business. Due to conflict of interest regulations, consultants were prohibited from offering services to clients of the group’s audit business. A spin-off would have opened the door for EY to establish lucrative partnerships with tech giants like Google, which were previously off-limits.

However, the plan encountered resistance from leaders in EY’s US audit practice, who expressed concerns that it would leave the audit practice too vulnerable as a standalone entity. For Jamie Miller, assuming the role of CFO in the spun-off consulting business would have marked her return to the public markets three years after departing from General Electric to join privately held Cargill. During her nearly 14-year tenure at GE, she held various finance positions, including her role as Chief Financial Officer in her final years. In her last full year at the company, her compensation included a salary and bonus totaling $3.5 million, along with share awards amounting to $4.6 million, as reported in GE’s 2020 proxy statement. Earlier in her career, she was a partner at PwC, a rival of EY.

EY’s global CEO, Carmine Di Sibio, had anticipated that separating consulting from audit would set a precedent for other Big Four firms, positioning EY as a pioneer. However, the leaders of PwC, Deloitte, and KPMG had stated that they saw no reason to follow suit. Following the plan’s failure, Di Sibio announced in June that he would retire the following summer, triggering a six-way competition for his successor. In the interim, Alisdair Mann, a vice-chair based in London, has assumed the role of Chief Financial Officer since Jamie Miller’s departure.

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