Piet Klijnveld

Pieter 'Piet' Klijnveld (16 August 1874 – 9 February 1945) was a Dutch accountant who started a practice that after several mergers would grow into the international accounting firm KPMG.

Life and career

Pieter Klijnveld was born on 16 August 1874 in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He was the son of Pieter Klijnveld Sr. and Maria Christina Klijnveld. He married Cristina Johanna Royaards on 2 August 1906 in Amsterdam.

After working at the Amsterdam office of the Twentsche Bank (a precursor of ABN Amro), he opened a small accountancy practice in 1917 in his home on the Viottastraat. It would take a few years before a second office was in use on the Tesselschadestraat. Amsterdam was a bustling trade and investment hub for European and Asian industrialists. Many foreign enterprises, including royalty, governments, and even the Bank of England, traded extensively in the Netherlands at the time, making it an active market for financiers as well as importers and exporters of virtually everything.