CHARTS & GRAPHS

The 7.6x Machine: How Grassroots Firms Are Taking Private Equity for a Ride

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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.

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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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