Allan Koltin: What Elite CPA Firms Do Differently | Gear Up for Growth
The best firm build accountability cultures, develop climbers, and make tough calls.
Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
Private Equity’s Big Bet Faces an AI Shake-Up
But scale may matter more in the accounting and legal markets.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Steve Stagner: From Mattress Firm to CPA Firms
Before Rolling up CPA Firms, Stagner Built a Retail Empire on Acquisitions — Then Watched It Buckle.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Steve Stagner now runs Current, the accounting platform that has gathered more than 40 firms in roughly three years under backing from Thrive Holdings and describes its holding period as effectively permanent.
MORE CPA PE Deal Tracker™: What $1 Billion Buys in Today’s CPA Business
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 |
But before he arrived in the profession, Stagner spent a 23-year run building, taking public, selling and then rescuing the largest mattress retailer in the United States — a company whose climb and near-collapse trace almost entirely to the same instinct now reshaping the accounting business: growth by acquisition.
CPA PE Deal Tracker™: What $1 Billion Buys in Today’s CPA Business
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
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
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.”