Former PwC chair Powell is knighted
FORMER PwC chair and senior partner Ian Powell, who built up the firm’s turnaround practice in Manchester after being made partner in 1991, has been knighted.
Powell, who joined the company as a graduate trainee in 1977 and qualified with the ICAEW has been awarded the honour for services to professional services and the voluntary sector.
The official citation lauded his involvement in developing a collaborative government-business strategy to support economic growth and his creation of the PwC Foundation that supported the 2014 Invictus Games.
The knighthood represents a bittersweet farewell to 2016 for Sir Ian, who stepped down after eight years as PwC chair on July 1. One of his final efforts in this role was to try to inject some fact-based argument to the pro-European side of the referendum debate.
“Our inclination is that uncertainty is not good for business, it’s not good for investment decisions, and it’s not good for job creation in the future,” Powell said in the Sunday Telegraph.
After Price Waterhouse merged with Coopers & Lybrand he worked as part of the European business recovery practice before taking over that part of the UK firm’s services in 2000 and served as the administrator of MG Rover in 2005.
He joined the firm’s UK management board in 2006 and was elected as chairman and senior partner in July 2008.
