Mark Korda: Flying high
Mark Korda's high-powered career
in accounting shows graduates that the sky's the limit, writes Fiona
Perry.
Swinburne accounting graduate Mark Korda first came to national prominence as one of the two administrators appointed to handle the Ansett crisis, Australia's largest insolvency, in 2001.
They were heady times. Mark found himself fronting daily media conferences for three months and handling the heavy emotional and political fallout that came with the collapse of one of Australia's great corporate icons . An unfamiliar territory for an accountant, he admits.
"The Ansett administration, which is ongoing, has been challenging on many levels," Mark says. "There was the size and the complexity of the company to deal with - 15,000 employees, 133 planes, 42 companies and $1 billion in assets - but there was also the human side of the tragedy where employees who were highly specialised in the field and who had devoted their lives to the company found themselves without a job."
In April 2002, Mark and Ansett co-administrator Mark Mentha, who were partners at global firm Arthur Andersen at the time, left to form their own firm, KordaMentha. Starting out with 60 staff, they now employ 180 people at six offices around Australia and provide unique professional services such as corporate recovery and real estate and corporate advisory practices.
Mark says the profession in Australia has gone through some major changes, with the big eight firms reduced to four over recent years. "The trend is now to highly specialised auditing and tax firms, and graduates need to have deep specialist skills within particular disciplines, such as tax."
With firms finding it harder to recruit good graduates, Mark recommends accounting as a great career that can lead to jobs in diverse business fields including management and marketing.
He looks back on his own student days at Swinburne during the 1970s with fondness. "We were the first occupants of the BA building. I remember a lecturer in first year telling us, 'You're not here for beer and biscuits'. We got the message straight away that we were at uni to learn!"
Website: www.kordamentha.com
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