City profiles
Richard Smith Several weeks after owning up to “the largest credit card hack in US history”, Equifax boss Richard Smith has “retired”, says The Guardian. What a mess he leaves behind. The embattled credit agency faces “multiple state and federal inquiries” and a class action lawsuit alleging “negligence”, after a massive breach exposed the personal details of 143 million people. One Democratic senator calls it “one of the most egregious examples of corporate malfeasance since Enron”. Days before the hack was revealed, several top executives sold stock totalling $1.7m; Equifax has since lost 27% of its value. Smith, 57, who joined from General Electric in 2005 and kick-started a decade of growth, doesn’t leave emptyhanded. Bloomberg reports that he has at least $18.4m in retirement benefits. Given the severity of the crisis facing KPMG’S South African business, Nhlamulo Dlomu’s decision to take charge “could be viewed as brave, principled or naive, or a combination of all three”, says the FT. Eight senior partners have now resigned from the firm because of its links to the Gupta brothers, who are accused of exploiting their relationship with President Jacob Zuma to win lucrative contracts. The new boss, a single mother who grew up in the impoverished Limpopo province, is certainly a breath of fresh air. The question for KPMG’S 3,400 employees in the country is whether Dlomu, who has spent most of her career in HR and management consulting, and ran an interior design company, “has the force of personality to prevent clients from ditching the firm en masse.”