Demetrios (Jim) G. Logothetis, Leadership 100 Chairman, has been appointed Chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)

Demetrios (Jim) G. Logothetis

Demetrios (Jim) G. Logothetis, Leadership 100 Chairman, has been appointed Chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) effective February 10th, 2026, according to an announcement on January 30, 2026.

The PCAOB is a nonprofit organization based in Washington D. C. that oversees the audit process for publicly traded companies in the United States. It consists of a five-member full-time board, appointed in five-year terms by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and over 800 staff with a current annual budget of approximately $400 million.

The Organization was established in 2002 with the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in response to several high-profile accounting scandals, including Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco International. Today, PCAOB’S independent oversight helps to protect investors against similar scandals.

The PCAOB is responsible for registering public accounting firms, establishing auditing standards, and inspecting registered public firms for compliance with the established standards.

The total market value of all public companies in the United States is approximately seventy trillion. It is more than double of the market value of all European and Chinese public companies combined.

Jim was born in 1956 and raised in the small remote village of Karatoula Kynourias in the province of Arkadia Greece. The village had no electricity or running water. He was thirteen years old when he and his parents and older brother immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago in 1969. He did not speak any English at that time.

He graduated from Steinmetz Public High School in 1974 and earned his Bachelor’s degree with high honors from De Paul University majoring in accounting in 1977 and his MBA in accounting, finance and international business from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (now Booth) in 1978 at the age of twenty two. He is a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Management Accountant.

Jim had a forty-year career with the public accounting firm Ernst & Young starting in 1979 reaching the level of senior partner and Vice Chair of Global Accounts. As a partner over a twenty-nine-year period he served as Lead Audit Partner for primarily public companies including several in the Fortune 500 list. He was based in Chicago for most of his career but also served in Frankfurt Germany from 1990 to 1996 and Atlanta from 2014 to his retirement in 2019. He also served in several firm leadership roles including Midwest Regional Partner of Assurance and Chair of the Partner Advisory Council, the board of directors of the firm.

Outside his EY career Jim served as a Senior Advisor to the Office of the CFO in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2020 and on several private and not for profit boards including De Paul University, The National Boys and Girls Clubs of America, The National Hellenic Museum, The National Hellenic Society and others. He served as board chair for  The Hellenic American Academy , The American College of Greece and Leadership 100, where he has served for four years, two consecutive terms of two years each, with his current term  formally ending  at the 35th Annual Leadership 100 Conference, February 5-8, 2026, in Phoenix, Arizona. He has received several honors and awards including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

Jim and his wife Marianthe have three married children and ten grandchildren. They divide their time between Chicago, Naples, Florida, and Greece.