CHARTS & GRAPHS

CPA PE Deal Tracker™: What $1 Billion Buys in Today’s CPA Business

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A Tale of Two Theses: Two of the world’s biggest investors place opposing bets. 

KKR takes Crowe. Baker Tilly lands Anchin. Smith+Howard flips. Cherry Baekert ropes Calvetti Ferguson.

By CPA Trendlines Research

KKR, the global investment firm synonymous with “leveraged buyout,” is taking a majority stake in Crowe, 12th on the top 100 lists, for $2.5 billion to $3 billion, including $1 billion in debt.

MORE Private Equity and Institutional Capital | MORE CPA PE Deal Tracker™: 13 Firms Rolled Up in May. 92 So Far this Year | All 466 Deals for the Last 10 Years | Private Equity’s Accounting Playbook Is Shifting from Dealmaking to Operating Systems | CPA-PE Deal Tracker™: How Big Buyouts Are Turning the Profession into a Platform | Ready the Stack Play: Tech Arbitrage Under Private Equity | Staying Independent: Why Your Best Clients Hope You Turn Down Private Equity |PE Wars: The CPA Platform Economy Is Concentrating Fast | The PE Takeover: Audit Problem? What Audit Problem? |  The 7.6x Machine: How Grassroots Firms Are Taking Private Equity for a Ride | With Apax Sale, CohnReznick Starts Building a National Platform | PE Deal Tracker Update: Alan Whitman Plants a Flag in the Private Equity Landscape | How PE Drives Billing Rates Higher | How Private Equity Created $200 Billion in New Riches for CPAs |

Meanwhile, the Tampa-based platform Crete Professionals Alliance is renaming itself Current and confirming that backer Thrive Holdings is earmarking up to $1 billion to roll up dozens of small and midsize local firms.

Each set of investors is deploying $1 billion or more, but with very different theses. The fact that the market is supporting both suggests the market hasn’t decided which is the better strategy.
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CPA PE Deal Tracker™: 13 Firms Rolled Up in May. 92 So Far this Year

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New Survey: 57% Say PE Threatens the CPA Brand. But They’ll Take the Money.

Most CPAs are concerned that private equity is undermining the CPA profession’s reputation for independence and objectivity. Only 10% say PE will have little or no impact. Fewer still can say PE will improve client service. (CPA Trendlines)

By CPA Trendlines

It’s a toss-up between CPAs opposed to PE and those unopposed. (CPA Trendlines)

As the CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™ adds 13 more closings for the month of May, a new survey shows accountants worrying about PE tarnishing the image and reputation of the profession. But half say they might take the money anyway.

MORE Private Equity | MORE All 466 Deals for the Last 10 Years

The CPA Trendlines PE Deal Tracker now contains 466 verified tracker rows. Through May 31, the tracker shows 92 meaningful 2026 events, including 81 M&A deals. Full-year 2025 finished with 176 meaningful events, including 158 M&A deals. The last three consecutive months have produced the first sustained plateau in 12-month trailing M&A activity since the acceleration phase that began in 2023.

Nearly half of the professionals in the new CPA Trendlines survey — 49.5 percent — describe themselves as decidedly opposed to private equity investment: fiercely independent, not interested, never ever.

The rest, a bare but discernible majority, are not. They would do a deal for the right price. Or they are already in play. Or have already done a deal.

“It only makes sense to keep our options open,” says Michael Royer of Royer Advisors and Accountants in Falmouth, Maine. He is not opposed, and he is not sold, adding “it’s still a personal business — and we don’t know the full impact of AI.”

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CPA PE Deal Tracker™: 10 Years, 466 Deals

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Deal Log, Analysis & Leaderboards – Monthly through May 2026

Where the Deals Are: Top Ten U.S. States

California leads with 47 deals over the last 10 years, followed by New York with 43, and Texas with 31. (CPA Trendlines)

By CPA Trendlines Research

Private equity is buying accounting firms faster than the profession can name the buyers.

MORE CPA PE Deal Tracker™: 57% Say PE Threatens the CPA Brand. But They’ll Take the Money.

MORE Private Equity

The CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™ now counts 466 verified deals reaching back to 2016, and the shape of that market is no longer a story about scattered tuck-ins. It is a story about concentration.

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CPA-PE Deal Tracker™: How Big Buyouts Are Turning the Profession into a Platform

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Venture capital crashes the private equity party in accounting.

Consolidation constellation: Sponsors in blue, platforms in red, targets in gold.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™ shows the steep rise in deal flow, hitting more than 450.

Private equity’s push into accounting is entering a new and more complicated phase: platform building, sponsor recycling, technology investments, blended tax and wealth services — and now, a new pipeline of cash from venture capital.

MORE PE Wars: The CPA Platform Economy Is Concentrating Fast | Alan Whitman: Why the Next Big CPA Firms Won’t Look Like CPA Firms | Gear Up for Growth | The PE Takeover: Audit Problem? What Audit Problem? | 1,000 Deals Show Where PE Money in Accounting Really Goes. | The 7.6x Machine: How Grassroots Firms Are Taking Private Equity for a Ride | Deal Tracker: PE Platforms Accelerate the Grab for CPA Firms | With Apax Sale, CohnReznick Starts Building a National Platform | PE Deal Tracker for Feb. 2026: 57 deals in 60 days | PE Deal Tracker Update: Alan Whitman Plants a Flag in the Private Equity Landscape | Alan Whitman: Breaking the Mold with PE Backing | Holistic Guide
MORE Private Equity

This month’s CPA Trendlines CPA-PE Deal Tracker™ shows nine new deals in April, down from the first-quarter deal-closing frenzy but bringing the year-to-date deal count through April 30 to 78, well ahead of the 44 logged in the same window of 2025.

The broader verified dataset now includes 452 in-scope events, giving CPA Trendlines a clearer view of what private capital is doing after its first wave of accounting-firm investments.

The latest data does not show a retreat. It shows a transformation. The new gambits go well beyond roll-ups, and include service line extensions, corporate carve-outs, cross-industry tie-ups, recapitalizations, continuations and a buzzy new venture-backed startup.

World domination

The deal models are sprawling in all directions as big money battles for a dwindling number of prime firms and squeezes for synergies in the firms they’ve acquired.

In the mix, accounting is morphing from a profession into a platform. A launchpad from which to sell a growing, and traditionally conflict-laden, range of products and services. From tax planning to wealth management, from outsourced accounting systems to internal audit, and from risk management to insurance sales.

A once incongruous, even contradictory, collection of services are being acquired, aligned and advanced. The ambition is market encirclement. The impulse is world domination.

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