Grant Thornton Flexes PE Muscle in CBIZ Deal

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The biggest bank account wins.

By CPA Trendlines Research
Special Report

If the Grant Thornton deal for CBIZ suggests the next stage of accounting firm consolidation, then size alone, as measured in top firm rankings, is no longer the decisive advantage.

MORE Special Report on the CBIZ-Grant Thornton Deal: 

  1. Fatal Attraction: How the Marcum Deal Set Up CBIZ for the Grant Thornton Takeover
  2. CBIZ Tells Grant Thornton No, No, No, Before Saying Yes
  3. Grant Thornton Flexes PE Muscle in CBIZ Deal
  4. CBIZ: Spanning 2 Rollup Eras in 2 Centuries
  5. $55 a Share: Who Won, Who Lost in CBIZ’s 29-Year Rollup
  6. CPA PE Deal Tracker™: The Consolidator Gets Consolidated

COMING NEXT: Was CBIZ CEO Jerry Grisko Worth It? MORE Private Equity

Instead, capital that can be deployed repeatedly into acquisitions, technology and integration is today’s essential ingredient. READ MORE →

Private Equity Brings in the Big Guns

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New executives take the reins at CPA firms.

New deals, new faces. Top row: Burger, Brady, Whitman. Bottom row: Cordero, O’Boyle, Garrambone, Comerford.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Jim Brady spent 45 years helping lead Deloitte and Grant Thornton. Dee Burger developed consulting and technology businesses at Capgemini and Insight Enterprises. Alan Whitman built Baker Tilly into one of the nation’s largest accounting firms.

MORE Private Equity

Now all three are taking top positions at accounting firms backed by private equity, as institutional investors increasingly pair growth capital with experienced executives to steer platforms into larger, more diversified organizations.

The CPA PE Deal Tracker™ from CPA Trendlines documents 527 institutional investments and acquisitions involving accounting firms and related businesses from 2020 through June 2026, including 474 transactions backed by institutional capital and 386 private-equity-backed transactions in particular. Much of the consolidation surge focuses on ownership, acquisitions and valuation. But now some executive appointments point to another trend: building deeper executive leadership.

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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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