Former KPMG Chairman Dies at 53

Eugene D. O’Kelly, former chairman and chief executive of the accounting firm KPMG, has died, the company announced. He was 53.

O’Kelly died Saturday at his New York home, KPMG said in a statement.

He resigned his executive roles in June after disclosing that he was diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer, but remained a senior partner.

O’Kelly led KPMG from 2002 to 2005 and is recognized for changing the company’s structure, culture and governance after it was badly stung by a government probe into tax shelters it devised for wealthy clients from 1997 through 2000.

KPMG last month agreed to pay a $456-million fine after admitting it helped customers evade billions of dollars in capital gains and income taxes by developing and marketing tax shelters and concealing them from the Internal Revenue Service. The government decided to settle rather than pursue criminal charges to avoid the chance of thousands of lost jobs that followed the prosecution of another accounting firm, Arthur Andersen.

O’Kelly, a native New Yorker, graduated with a degree in accounting from Penn State University in 1972. He earned an MBA from Stanford in 1977. He joined KPMG in 1972 in San Francisco and was made a partner a decade later.

He is survived by his mother, wife, two daughters and two grandchildren. A memorial service will be held Saturday at St. James Episcopal Church in New York City.