The Andrew Davidson Interview: Ian Powell of PWC

As the global economy resets itself after last year's collapse, it is the right time to be asking these kinds of questions. Powell, however, argues that it is not that easy.

"You are looking at the realignment of tax regimes around the world and, while we have a view, it needs many governments to resolve it. And while we appreciate the sentiments of what Christian Aid is doing and acknowledge the strength of its feelings . . ."

Please stop sending the cards? No, he says, the campaign - launched last spring - died down some weeks ago. His point is simple. "We are not the policymakers."

This month marks the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when PWC was sent in as administrator. This week PWC will release full-year figures expected to show profit down but revenue up, as its recovery and consultancy income compensates for a slide in transactional business. You could be forgiven for thinking the accountants win whichever way the dice fall.

Does that dissuade the big four from influencing government policy? Powell shakes his head. "I don't think the input of the big accountancy firms can change government minds across the board. But I do think this moral feeling has been out there for some time, and no tax scheme here gets to see the light of day that hasn't been through a thorough internal discussion as to whether it is the right thing to do."

Sitting high up in PWC's base over London's Charing Cross station, the Thames laid out beneath his glass-walled office, Powell shifts his lean frame expectantly. Born in the Black Country, educated at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, snappily dressed and engagingly blokeish, he doesn't look like he enjoys conforming to type as Britain's top accountant.

One minute he is enthusing about his love of motor sports and West Bromwich Albion. The next, he talks cogently of his Methodist upbringing, and his sympathies for Christian Aid's aims. He also drives a vintage Aston Martin, and listens to Massive Attack. In a sector where leaders tend to be colourless and press-shy, he is cut from a different cloth.

But Powell is also tough, as you would expect from a former head of PWC's business recovery unit. Last year he accepted the chairmanship, and a likely £3.3m pay package, voted in by PWC's 850 partners in Britain. This year he has asked them to take a pay cut so he can maintain graduate intake numbers and invest to grow the business. That takes a certain chutzpah.

"We're No1 among the accountants by revenue and people, and we are the No1 graduate employer. And, as a matter of principle, we decided to recruit the same number of graduates this year as last."

Why? Because the future of the firm, part of the biggest accountancy group in the world, is too important to let the numbers slip. But also, he says, because he feels there is a moral imperative to keep offering young people a chance. PWC partners took home a profit share of about £797,000 last year. It will be less this year because of Powell's initiative. The firm also took 200 voluntary redundancies before Christmas.

So much for all accountants doing well. In fact, PWC is likely to be the only one of the big four to have increased revenues, testimony to the strategy Powell laid out last year when he took over as senior partner. Powell was the surprise winner - senior partners normally come from audit - after an internal election featuring four candidates. He jokes that he must have won by a landslide, "because I haven't met anybody since who didn't vote for me", he laughs.

Others suggest he appealed to younger PWC partners who wanted less of a posh Oxbridge clone. True? "Maybe people just found me easier to relate to," he shrugs.

Gareth Jones, professor at IE business school in Madrid, who taught Powell at the Insead business school, says the PWC leader has an acute understanding of what makes a partnership work. "He carries partners with him. He's authentic and he's shrewd enough to use what's different about him well."

That difference includes roots in old-fashioned industrial Britain. Powell's father was a print firm manager, his mother a devout Methodist who took the family to the same church in Sedgley where her mother had been baptised. Powell says he learnt his values at Sunday school. "Deeply ingrained: treat everybody the way you would like to be treated."

He started at Price Waterhouse in Birmingham, before moving through corporate finance and business recovery, working with Marconi, NTL and Drax in the 1990s. Powell's last high-profile job was sorting out MG Rover's fraught administration in 2005. His ease in front of the cameras handling a politically sensitive situation did not go unnoticed. "It probably was great for my career," he agrees, "and good profile for the firm. But we weren't just talking about doing the right thing, we were demonstrating it."

Friends say he is steelier than he looks. "You need objectivity, authority and leadership in business recovery and he has every bit of it," says PWC partner Tony Lomas.

It's also an apt background for the present, straitened times. Powell says he wants to be more accessible, citing feedback from FTSE 100 clients which suggests that accountancy chiefs should be more visible, explaining what their groups do.

He wants to provide more access to the top internally, too, so staff can voice their concerns easily. That has its drawbacks. He jokes that so many have found out about his 7am breakfast in a local coffee shop that he may have to move it.

And he wants a more flexible PWC. He is already shifting resources to match the changes in the economy, moving people to business recovery from tax and due diligence, where work is shrinking. This week's numbers will show this is paying off. "Our people want to know we are doing everything to keep them busy and in work."

That's mirrored internationally where PWC, a network of affiliated national partnerships, has been reorganised into three global "clusters": central (Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia), western (Americas) and eastern (China). Powell heads the central cluster.

Why not just become a single global entity? "Because I think we would lose a lot of the partner culture. We want to be successful locally with the capacity to sell to global clients."

Colleagues say he will have his hands full, juggling growth in the Middle East with fire-fighting round the rest of the central region. He has already overseen the suspension of PWC partners in India because of their involvement in the Satyam scandal. There is always more litigation during a downturn.

However, he also has to keep an eye on PWC's domestic agenda, ensuring its network here is ready to grow when the economy recovers. Hence his insistence that graduate recruitment stays steady. PWC cut numbers before, and suffered.

Does he see the economy picking up soon? "There does seem to be more stability, but I am fearful a large event could unsettle things again. We expect 2010 to be much like 2009, fairly flat, but we are prepared to take advantage of any upturn."

He is not happy with the debt incurred by government, and believes it will be a drag on recovery. As for the debate on bonuses and rewards, he says it misses the point. "The real issue is, have we got the systems right to prevent such a collapse happening again?"

Perhaps that is something he can push the government on, even if he is unwilling to rock the policy boat? "Our job is to look after clients," he says. "We need to choose the issues we go out on carefully."

So maybe he just can't help being cautious, after all. Christian Aid, and others, will be taking note.

The life of Ian Powell

VITAL STATISTICS

Born: March 16, 1956

Marital status: married, with four children

School: High Arcal Grammar, Sedgley

University: Wolverhampton Polytechnic

First job: PWC trainee

Salary package: £3.3m with bonus

Homes: Covent Garden, Wilmslow in Cheshire, and Salcombe in Devon

Car: 1965 Aston Martin DB5

Book: All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy Film: Three Days of the Condor

Music: "My tastes are totally eclectic - make it Puccini and Massive Attack"

Gadget: iPod Nano

Last holiday: the Maldives

WORKING DAY

The chairman and senior partner of Price Waterhouse Coopers wakes at 6.30am at his flat in London's Covent Garden and breakfasts in a local coffee shop. "I take an hour there to update my day with my BlackBerry and briefing papers," says Ian Powell. Then he walks to his Charing Cross office for an 8am start.

"My day is split between internal meetings and those with clients or prospective clients. I am always trying to find out what their experience is of PWC, and how that can be improved. I also want to stay as open as possible to people inside the firm."

He finishes by 7pm, and often has a work dinner to follow. He returns to the family home in Cheshire every weekend.

DOWNTIME

Ian Powell loves motor sport. "Every year 10 of us go to Le Mans to watch the racing. We sleep in the cars overnight. It's good fun." He recently paid "six figures" for a vintage Aston Martin DB5.

He also keeps a powerboat at his Salcombe holiday home, and works out in a London gym two evenings a week with a personal trainer. "I need the discipline of a meeting to get there."

Most weekends he watches his children play sport. Four times a year he will catch a West Brom game. He is long-standing fan - his father was a trainee footballer at the club.