PwC's tax practice head Kanabar, 15 colleagues quit

Dinesh Kanabar, the head of tax practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) India, has resigned along with 15 executive directors. Most of them are expected to join rival audit and consulting firm KPMG.

Kanabar has confirmed his resignation from PwC, but declined to attribute reasons for leaving or reveal his future plans. "It will not be fair since I am serving my notice period," he said.

"There were issues of integration (in PwC) and I am moving on for better prospects," he added. The 15 executive directors were all colleagues of Kanabar in the tax practice arm of the audit firm.

Early, in December, PwC sacked the head of its India operations Ramesh Rajan, replacing him with Gautam Banerjee, who before that headed its Singapore operations. This was seen as a direct fallout of the Satyam Computer Services scam. (See: Hurt by Satyam scam, PwC replaces India chief)

PwC's audit arm Price Waterhouse was the auditor for Satyam and the authorities have jailed two of its Hyderabad-based partners, along with Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju and others, for alleged connivance in the fraudulent accounting practices that resulted in India's biggest corporate scam.

The replacement of Rajan with Banerjee had sparked rumours that senior partners in the firm were unhappy. Kanabar was seen as one of the top contenders for Rajan's job.