Deloitte appoints Sheila Doyle as new CIO

Poached from Norton Rose Fulbright, Doyle will replace Mark Westbrook, who had been acting CIO at Deloitte since May

"Big Four" accountancy firm Deloitte has hired Norton Rose Fulbright's global chief information officer (CIO), Sheila Doyle, as its new CIO for the UK & Switzerland.

Doyle will replace Mark Westbrook, who has been acting CIO since Matt Peers left Deloitte to become CIO of Linklaters back in May.

Doyle has experience as CIO of BP, and as IT director of the Royal Mail. She had a brief stint as a consultant at Gartner, before moving to law firm Norton Rose in May 2011. She remained as global CIO of the company after its merger with US-based law firm Fulbright & Jaworski in 2012.

Doyle will begin her role as CIO of Deloitte in January, where she will lead a department of 300 IT professionals.

"We are delighted that Sheila has joined Deloitte in this crucial position of CIO. This appointment demonstrates Deloitte's continued focus on the strategic role of technology within the firm," said David Gill, managing partner internal client services at Deloitte.

"Sheila's wealth of experience from her roles at other leading organisations will be of enormous benefit to Deloitte and will prove invaluable in realising Deloitte's innovative IT strategy," he added.

Doyle said she was looking forward to bringing her experience to Deloitte.

"My role will support [the ambition of providing excellent client services] by delivering customer facing solutions and ensuring our technology can drive digital innovation," she said.

Last year, Computing spoke to then CIO of Deloitte, Matt Peers, who explained that the company would start to use more and more cloud-based services as people's view on the cloud softened.

He said that in some ways Deloitte had to follow what its clients were doing in regards to the cloud, but he was convinced that cloud would feature more prominently in Deloitte's clients' plans and that his firm would respond accordingly.