Taking Stock - Your career's not over until the Big Five sing.
A life in the bosom of one of the Big Five accountancy firms is a far cry, or song, from strutting the boards and voicing the chest with one of the big three of opera.
Most people leave the world of accountancy for the bright lights of the stage or the arts, but one PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant was drawn to the thrill of tax from the bind of the stage.
At a recent English ICA farming conference in Birmingham, Martin Pickering from PwC came to give an erudite and commanding talk on current succession issues in farming and, as he took his place on the stage, was introduced as the man who had once sung with Luciano Pavarotti, the world famous tenor.
‘In a previous life I was a professional singer,’ divulged Pickering, who was a freelance professional with the London Voices before treading the balance sheets.
Tenor Pickering’s great operatic star moment came when he sang with the big man himself during a Decca recording in London – which just goes to show that out there in the Big Five there was life before accountancy.