KPMG has appointed Catherine Burnet to head up its practices in Scotland, replacing Craig Anderson who will be retiring at the end of September following a 37-year career with the firm. Burnet will become regional chair in October and is the first female senior partner of a Big Four accountancy firm in Scotland.  She is currently head of KPMG’s financial services team in Scotland, and has a career spanning more than 20 years with the firm.  Burnet joined KPMG in 1994 in Edinburgh, before moving to London in 1997 and then completed a two-year secondment to the US.

RSM has appointed one of its senior partners, Simon Hart, as knowledge management partner. He has worked for the firm for 28 years and moves from the role of RSM’s regional managing partner for the central region to lead the firm’s newly-formed knowledge management function.

Carpenter Box has appointed  Maurice Frost as departmental director in the business services group to help build on the growth of the Gatwick office. Since May 2015, Frost has been working in interim finance director roles at owner-managed business and not for profits, after 25 years at Sussex based accountants, Richard Place Dobson, both as partner and director.

Ann Somerville, former head of tax at French Duncan, has left the firm to join specialist tax advisory practice, Barr & Ford, based in Glasgow, as a director. Barr & Ford was set up by ex French Duncan colleague Andrew Ford in 2014. She was previously a corporate tax director at Baker Tilly.

David Kitson has joined Wilkins Kennedy as a tax partner, where he is responsible for overseeing three Wilkins Kennedy offices in the North Thames region, including Amersham, Hertford and Southend. He has more than 20 years’ experience, including 10 years at RSM Tenon and a stint at Towers Watson from 2014. He specialises in working with owner managed businesses and entrepreneurs, for both corporate and individual tax affairs and restructuring.

Giulia Cipollini, head of Withers' Italian tax practice, has been appointed to join a newly formed working group which will make recommendations on how Italy taxes trust structures. The team was put together by Maurizio Bernardo MP, President of the Finance Select Committee in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, and is tasked with considering how to reform the taxation of trusts.

Kieran Smith has been appointed as senior manager of management accounting and outsourcing at Sussex firm Knill James. Former head of finance at the Diva Group, Smith also spent eight years at Mazars.

Highways England has appointed Vanessa Howlison as chief financial officer. Howlison has a strong track record in government finance and joins from the Department for Transport where she has been group finance director since 2013. She was previously at the Department of Energy and Climate Change and before that at OfSTED.

R3, the insolvency trade body, has a new president with confirmation that Andrew Tate, partner and head of restructuring at Kreston Reeves, and an insolvency practitioner with over 25 years’ experience, is take up the role for the next year. Tate’s career started at BDO and Deloitte and he went on to become a partner in Baker Tilly, followed by a partnership in a smaller firm, Abbott Fielding, before moving to Kreston Reeves in 2011 to lead its restructuring practice.

Adrian Hyde, R3 deputy vice-president 2015-16 and partner at CVR Global, is R3’s new vice-president.

The IFRS Foundation has appointed Matt Tilling as director of education. Tilling was previously based in Perth, Western Australia, where he split his time between professional accounting and academia. As a senior manager at BDO, he was responsible for strategic development and CPD delivery for both internal teams and external clients. At the University of Notre Dame in Australia he was a senior lecturer and head of accounting programmes.

The Insolvency Practitioners Association has appointed Maureen Leslie, founder director of MLM Solutions as its new president for the coming year. Leslie has been a member of the IPA since 1997, when she qualified as an insolvency practitioner, and has served as a director on its governing board, becoming a fellow of the IPA in 2008. 

Leeds Building Society has appointed Dave Conway as head of quality and competency.  Conway previously led KPMG’s managed service quality, operational risk and information security functions. Prior to this he worked at UK Asset Resolution, latterly managing quality assurance, customer experience and coaching functions across their operations.