In less than three weeks after Gautam Banerjee was appointed its chairman and Peter Harvey deputy chairman, PricewaterhouseCoopers India has seen a rush of departures of senior people.

The latest to quit is the head of tax practice, Dinesh Kanabar, quit. Along with him 10 partners or executive directors also left. This came in the wake of the December 16 resignation of another executive director for tax practice, Amrish Shah.

Confirming the development, a PwC India spokesperson told Financial Chronicle, “We can confirm that Kanabar has resigned, along with some tax executive directors.” Besides Kanabar, FC could confirm the names of five others: Sachin Menon, Hiten Kotak, Puneet Shah, Rajiv Dhume and Kishen Mehta. All of them may join KPMG India’s tax practice.

The organisation has already appointed Ketan Dalal and Shyamal Mukherjee as the new joint leaders for the tax and regulatory practice. “Both are senior and highly reputed tax professionals,” said the spokesperson. Putting up a brave front, PwC said, “Occasionally leave and of course new people join.”

A former partner of PwC India, who is now with a rival firm, told Financial Chronicle: “In PwC the thumb rule is that each partner does (or brings) a business of Rs 10 crore. Therefore, the latest development will have serious impact on its top line. One can easily take a guess as to how much business the firm might lose in the near future.”

Some of the partners in PwC have already started raising questions about the justification of the two-year old RSM deal. “How could you go in for a Rs 80 crore buy-out deal without any non-compete agreement? It’s nearly two years that PwC bought out RSM and the tax partners who are leaving now are mostly from the RSM background.”

The PwC India leadership has now tried to strike a balance by appointing Dalal (originally from RSM) and Mukherjee (from PW) as joint leaders of its tax team.