SURVEYS & RESEARCH

How Private Equity Turns CPA Loyalty into Legal Risk

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Overlapping ownership tests conflict and control. Cue the lawyers.

Rivals in the Loop: Grant Thornton and Wipfli, now stablemates under New Mountain Capital’s billion-dollar investments, seek to maintain separate operations and arm’s-length decision-making. Shown in Chicago: The Grant Thornton Tower on North Clark (left) and Wipfli offices at the Chicago Title building on Wacker (right).

By CPA Trendlines Research

Grant Thornton and Wipfli keep offices barely a half-mile apart in Chicago’s Loop — about a 10-minute walk, or a single stop on the “L.”

Zoom out. After a generation of competitive drive, the rival firms are now part of the same investor’s stable.

MORE Private Equity | What $1 Billion Buys in Today’s CPA Market

Private equity’s push into accounting is making for some strange bedfellows, as some investment firms build out networks of ostensibly independent firms that increasingly overlap in clients, services, acquisitions and talent markets.

With more than 500 deals under study, the CPA PE Deal Tracker™ from CPA Trendlines Research provides a vivid picture of private equity firms quietly adding a new layer of consolidation as they roll up the CPA profession. Sponsors are evolving into holding companies with multiple platforms, built simultaneously on a number of large CPA firms as acquisition engines. At least five sponsors now hold two or more competing platforms at the same time.

“As the Peter Parker principle reminds us, with great power comes great responsibility,” Proskauer Rose LLP, the private-funds legal powerhouse, says in a client playbook. “Sponsors should remember the portfolio company corollary: with greater control comes greater exposure to liability.”

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Outlook: Tax and Accounting Workloads Are Only Getting Heavier

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Accounting Firms Face a Productivity Test as Demand Outruns Capacity.

Accountants Demand Index: Steady Growth in New Work

Forecast: After steady expansion, the index predicts a decline in December, followed by a sharp advance in January 2027

By CPA Trendlines Research

The tax and accounting profession’s biggest problem is no longer finding work. It is finding the time, people, and technology to do it.

The new CPA Trendlines Accountants Demand Index, which slipped in May, remains firmly above year-ago levels. The proprietary index of economic indicators fell to 121.2 in May, down 0.3 percent from April but still up 1.8 percent from a year earlier and comfortably above its 2019 baseline level of 100.

MORE Accountants Demand Index: How it works, how to use it

The next six months are forecast to follow a pattern firm owners will recognize. June softens. July surges with the sharpest single-month gain in the forecast window. Then August stalls, nearly flat, which is where the index makes its call.

History says late summer is the reset. This year, the data says the reset holds: the index climbs steadily through September, October and into November, reaching its fall peak before December pulls it back below zero.

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CPA PE Deal Tracker™: 57% Say PE Threatens the CPA Brand.

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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 500-plus Headline Deals for the Last 10 Years

The CPA PE Deal Tracker™ now contains more than 500 headline deals and developments. Through May 31, the tracker shows 91 headline 2026 events, including 83 M&A deals. Full-year 2025 finished with 190 significant events, including 178 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.

Meanwhile, 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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