KEY POINTS:
Pip McCrostie has lived outside New Zealand for more than 20 years but the Christchurch-born expatriate comes back each Christmas and still calls New Zealand home.
She has been appointed the global head of the corporate finance division for Ernst & Young, one of the biggest accountancy firms in the world.
McCrostie, who lives in London with her husband and 17-year-old son, left New Zealand in 1987 when her husband got a job in the UK running a private equity company.
"The plan was to go for a couple of years - look where that got us," she jokes.
She arrived during one of the toughest markets, the aftermath of the 1987 sharemarket crash, and has since seen a couple more downturns. But none of them has prepared her for the latest crisis.
"I have been through two previous downturns but I have never seen anything like this. There has been a fundamental lack of due diligence. We are not just going to come back up to where we were."
But the downturn has had one positive influence - it encouraged her to take up the new management position. "It was instrumental in me deciding to take this role."
Previously she was in charge of looking after private equity clients of the business and helping them structure tax deals.
Her new role involves leading about 8000 people who deal with corporate finance practice, private equity companies and corporates and sovereign wealth funds such as New Zealand's Superannuation Fund.
She has also taken up a directorship on the global board of Ernst & Young, allowing her to take a much more strategic role with the company, which employs 135,000 people worldwide.
She hopes it will allow her to help adapt the company to the changing times. "We are going to have to work hard to come through this. All the traditional work on the buy side is not going to exist when we come out of the financial crisis.
"The people that adapt first and smartest in working out the new business model will come out on top."
McCrostie originally trained as a lawyer but took a second qualification in accountancy after she found law lacked the commercial interaction she sought.
"I wanted to be part of the business." Law was too staid. "I needed to expand and spread my wings."
It was a big change for McCrostie, who had wanted to be a lawyer since she was 14.
She worked in the Wellington offices of Ernst & Young and then the Auckland office before transferring to the UK. Having to relearn tax law was a huge challenge.
She recalls her first holiday while living in Britain. She went to Turkey and spent all the time sitting in the hotel pool reading up on tax legislation.
"It wasn't going to come if I had sat back and waited."
McCrostie has always striven to reach the top. As a youngster she competed at an international level in squash before giving it up for her career. "I decided early on I could do two things well at any one time."
When she was younger it was squash and work. Then at university it was study and socialising.
Now her focuses are her job and family. "Even if I had to bake a cake at 3am I just did that."
But she says she couldn't do it all without her husband Grant.
The issue of too few women in top management positions is one McCrostie is hot on.
She believes there isn't a single answer to why so few women are in the top ranks.
"Sometimes we as women self-qualify. We come up to having kiddies and think it is just too hard."
The long hours that management work and the expectation that those hours will be put in are also a challenge. But she makes the most of time away from work to spend with family and encourages her staff to do the same.
She also believes it is the way men approach a top role that gets them the job.
"Men are good at throwing their hat into the ring."
McCrostie says it's important to get women together to talk about the issues. "Women are finding it more and more difficult to balance family and work - and that's a huge pity. We have got such talented people."
She is part of a mentoring programme for women who work for FTSE100 companies.
"I think it is tough out there for women but at the same time we as women need to push and promote ourselves. It can be done without being extreme or a super woman."
PIP McCROSTIE
Ernst & Young global head of corporate finance
Education: Law - honours from Canterbury University. Accounting - Victoria University.
Career: Practised law at Duncan Cotterill and worked for Arthur Young in Wellington and Auckland before joining Ernst & Young in London in 1987.
Family: Married with a 17-year- old son.
