Personnel Articles

STEVE Bragg, a 20-year motor industry specialist with extensive experience in automotive retail, has been appointed a partner at accounting and business advisory company Pitcher Partners.

Mr Bragg has spent the past four years as industry lead at KPMG Motor Industry Services team, based in Sydney.

Mr Bragg will head up compliance and advisory, creating opportunities for his motor industry clients by providing industry best practice consulting. He will be involved in buy-sell transactions and putting his motor industry experience into Pitcher Partners’ compliance offering in audit and tax.

Mr Bragg’s appointment comes at a time when there is a lot of movement and consolidation occurring in the motor industry. He told GoAutoNews Premium that auto retail operations “are more than just the dealerships. They have family interests, property interests and are a product of passion, grit and hard work”.

Mr Bragg said he believed Pitcher Partners was the best fit for his clients and himself.

“The firm has a strong focus on private clients and a holistic approach to service delivery. Making business personal is not just a tagline, it is what the team at Pitcher Partners do day in and day out,” he said.

“It is this personal approach to the delivery of services that the motor industry needs to navigate the continual changing environment not just for now, but into the future.

“Pitcher Partners already has a dedicated team servicing the motor industry and I am proud to lead a team which not only has the technical capabilities but an ethos of putting their clients at the centre of everything that they do”

Previously Mr Bragg was at CNH Industrial Australia where he was simultaneously head of finance for IVECO as well as CNH Industrial head of retail operations in Australia & New Zealand.

An early assignment for him at CNH was to turn around the business performance of five factory-owned dealerships which were drifting.

Over 15 months he successfully corrected their operational and financial performance before being called into head office to help with manufacturing operations, logistics, purchasing, the dealer network and marketing and sales.

A veteran of Horwath Motor Industry Services, Mr Bragg moved with the practice after it morphed from Horwath into Deloitte Motor Industry Services.

Mr Bragg first worked in the motor industry in the United States starting his career in the motor industry division at Crowe in Columbus, Ohio.

He first came to Australia while working on end-of-financial-year (EOFY) exchanges over a three-year period which ultimately saw him move permanently to Australia to join Horwath.

Steve Bragg

By John Mellor

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