Sudhir Kapadia is most likely to join Ernst & Young India as its global

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tax head with a supervisory authority on telecom-technology-media vertical. Kapadia, the former tax head of KPMG India, put in his papers last weekend after a 15-year long stint with the global auditing firm.

“This is like a cooking period for me. I will take a final call in a day or two,” Kapadia told Financial Chronicle over phone on Tuesday. When contacted, Kapadia neither confirmed nor denied his possible new role at Ernst &Young. “There are offers and options. At such times, the normal reaction is—here is a man who is available, can he join us? But I want to put a few things in place before I announce my next move,” Kapadia said.

Despite repeated attempts by Financial Chronicle, E&Y official spokesman was not available for comment. However, officials in the know of things said Kapadia would be joining on October 1 ‘if things do not change at the eleventh hour’.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is also learnt to be keen on having Kapadia on board. Kapadia had recently been mandated to look after the KPMG India’s consumer markets vertical, which was a possible trigger for his quitting the firm, a section of the company officials felt.

The impact of the ongoing churning in the India operations of the Four big auditing firms, KPMG, Deloitte & Touche, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst&Young, have started showing. Kapadia’s decision to join one of the market leaders, E&Y, might have been fuelled by the fact that the firm has already consolidated its 87 practices, including

India, into one single practice called EMEIA (Europe, West-Asia, India, Africa). Ernst & Young partners across Western and Eastern Europe, west Asia, India and Africa have overwhelmingly approved of the proposed integration of its country practices into a single EMEIA Area. The new Area will be a $11-billion organisation with more than 60, 000 people and 3, 300 partners. It has started operating as a single unit, led by Mark Otty as Area Managing Partner, and a single executive team.

Accordingly, E&Y India has restructured its leadership team, making R K Agarwal as the head of audit and business services (ABS), Rahul Roy its risk management partner and Tridibesh Basu, ex-Partner of PwC, as its audit head.