John Cotton is a Chartered Accountant and Certified Internal Auditor. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in Melbourne. Upon leaving the profession, John took the internal audit / risk management route and spent two years as an internal corporate auditor for the film distribution company, United International Pictures, investigating frauds in Chile, Thailand and South Korea, taking over the operations in both Chile and Thailand until General Managers were appointed.

In the mid-90s, he joined KPMG in London to help develop Risk Management methodologies, now recognised in international Risk Management standards and the application of risk to Internal Audit In 2001 John started a consultancy in London helping clients identify risks, mitigating their controls and implement the processes needed to improve operations. This role expanded upon the introduction of the SEC listing requirements of the Sarbanes Oxley Act in the USA. He project managed the Sarbanes Oxley implementation for the NASDAQ listed wireless telco Airspan Networks Inc., and was heavily involved in SOx projects for National Australia Bank and the Allied Irish Bank.

After 18 years international experience, having worked in over 30 countries, John returned to Australia in 2006 and took on an 18 month contract with Deloitte to run the outsourced internal audits for Orica and Sigma Pharmaceuticals.

John specialises in recruiting for the Accounting Profession, Accountants in Industry as well as Internal Audit and Technical Accounting roles.