“CPA Firm Grows Prosperous by Heeding Its Own Advice.” The Wall Street Journal published an article with that title in their May 18, 1981 issue about my firm, and this column describes some of what we did.
The article began by stating there were about 28,000 CPA firms in the U.S., with about 19,000 being sole practitioners and many others with just two or three CPAs. These numbers are lower than now, so the profession and small firms have grown significantly in the last 40-plus years. READ MORE →
Fewer than 200 investors triggered almost 900 acquisitions.
Global issues: 1,052 total firms impacted, 177 direct PE investments, 875 roll-up acquisitions, 7.6× 2025 roll-up multiplier, 4× multiplier growth since 2021.
By CPA Trendlines Research
A multiplier that has grown fourfold since 2021 reveals a transformation driven not by new private equity entrants, but by platform firms consuming the mid-market at speed.
It belies the notion that PE is taking over the accounting profession. In fact, new global research argues that local and mid-size firms worldwide are taking control of their own futures and using institutional capital to pick up the tab.
The numbers that define private equity’s advance into accounting do not look the way most people expect. The headlines feature the big firms and the brand-name investors — TowerBrook Capital and EisnerAmper, New Mountain Capital and Grant Thornton, Ares Management and Baker Tilly. But the actual architecture of the transformation is being built one level below: in the relentless, largely unnoticed roll-up of smaller practices into PE-backed platforms.
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