Mr Chris Watt

Chris co-leads PwC’s global and UK payroll business and is based in PwC/s Belfast office in Northern Ireland.

Chris started his career in the early 1990’s with Coopers and Lybrand, having joined their IT consulting practice as a graduate. After four years he decided to put his recently acquired skills and desire to be the next “Richard Branson” to the test and to work for a number of start up and early stage technology and telecommunications businesses. An inability to grow a convincing beard proved, at least in Chris’s view, to be the critical flaw in his grand plan and so in 2008 Chris returned to Coopers and Lybrand or what by then had become PricewaterhouseCoopers. After spending some years working in PwC’s consulting practice, Chris took on leading PwC’s UK payroll business. Like many people who find themselves working in payroll, it quickly became a passion and he’s never looked back. An opportunity to take on the mantle of global payroll leader in 2017 ( Chris prefers “global payroll emperor”), has not only has given Chris an opportunity to fulfil many of his personal ambitions but really opened his eyes to the opportunities that are there for the taking for the next generation of payroll aficionados. As he’s repeatedly said since 2012 - “there’s never been a better time to be in payroll”