PE
Private Equity Brings in the Big Guns
New executives take the reins at CPA firms.
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.
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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.
How Private Equity Turns CPA Loyalty into Legal Risk
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.”
With $1.8 Billion Deal, Eide Bailly Set for Explosive Growth
Reverence Capital turns a regional powerhouse into a national growth engine.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Eide Bailly didn’t need private equity to roll up more than a dozen local CPA firms in the last two years.
But the Reverence Capital Partners takeover, which values Eide Bailly at about $1.8 billion, means the Fargo, N.D., CPA firm can shift into hyperdrive and take a shot at competing on a national stage. With about $840 million in billings, up from $780 million a year before, the deal prices Eide Bailly at about 2.1 times revenue.
MORE Private Equity | What $1 Billion Buys in Today’s CPA Market
How Big Buyouts Are Turning the Profession into a Platform | Private Equity Turns CPA Loyalty into Legal Risk | PE Forces Firms to Pick a Future | What Elite CPA Firms Do Differently | Private Equity’s Big Bet Faces an AI Shake-Up | Steve Stagner: From Mattress Firm to CPA Firms | Private Equity’s Accounting Playbook Shifts from Dealmaking to Operating Systems
Less than two weeks before Eide Bailly’s deal, Chicago-based Crowe agreed to sell to KKR, famous for leveraged buyouts, for nearly $3 billion, at 2.2 times revenue.
The two deals mean that just over half of the top 30 firms are muscling up for expansion with outside capital. Only five of the firms between No. 6 Baker Tilly and No. 26 Sikich are left as independents. In the top 50, about half the firms are taking outside capital. At 100, it’s 29 firms. Overall, the CPA PE Deal Trackertm from CPA Trendlines Research counts more than 500 deals, most of them in the last three years.
In the top tiers of the accounting profession, the market has split into three clear, distinct philosophies: the PE-backed consolidators (like EisnerAmper or Baker Tilly), the ESOP pioneers (led by BDO), and the traditional independence holdouts (Forvis Mazars, CLA, Plante Moran, and Withum), who view partner-ownership as a major asset for long-term talent retention.
CPA PE Deal Tracker™: Crowe, Eide Bailly, Stephano Slack and Meaden & Moore [June-July 2026]
Deal Log, Analysis & Leaderboards – June-July 2026 Update
By CPA Trendlines Research
The newest activity in the CPA PE Deal Tracker™ from CPA Trendlines shows a sharper split between plain add-on acquisitions and platform-control events.
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The Tracker™ now follows 546 headline events, including 402 private equity acquisition rows, 493 institutional acquisition rows and 46 platform or control events since 2016.
Today’s update adds 17 verified entries since May 31: 14 in June and three so far in July. June shows 11 acquisitions and three platform-funding or control events. July adds two acquisitions and one new platform-funding event.