PE

Concrete Steps to Imagining Your Firm’s Future

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What is a vision you’d be proud of?

By Matt Rampe

You’re building momentum! If you were in an airplane, you’d be at about 10,000 feet and climbing rapidly toward your highest altitude. In the Imagine stage, we’ll take it all the way to 30,000 feet, where the big picture emerges clearly for all to see.

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If the Identify stage is about who we are and why we exist as a firm, Imagine is the exciting part where we create alignment around where we want to go together.
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Ready the Stack Play: Tech Arbitrage Under Private Equity

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Private equity isn’t just buying CPA firms. It’s rebuilding them—starting with the tech stack.

 By CPA Trendlines Research

From ERP systems to AI-powered audit tools, PE-backed accounting platforms are undergoing technology overhauls at a pace never before seen in the profession. The result is a widening gap between capitalized firms and traditional partnerships still running legacy software.

In CPA Trendlines’ benchmark dataset, independent firms average about 4% of revenue on technology, versus about 10% at PE-backed platforms.

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The logic is clear: better technology means faster service delivery, lower costs, and more data-driven decisions. For private equity investors, that translates directly into EBITDA expansion—and higher exit multiples.

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Lexy Kessler: Your Future Depends on These Three Questions | Gear Up for Growth

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At stake: Growth, relevance and survival.

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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher

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CPA firm leaders must act decisively on technology, talent strategy and long-term identity or risk falling behind in a rapidly evolving marketplace, Lexy Kessler, Chair of the AICPA and a partner at Aprio, tells JJean Caragher in a new episode of Gear Up for Growth.

MORE Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here MORE Gear Up for Growth | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network here

In a wide-ranging discussion, Kessler focuses on three urgent priorities for firm leaders.  

    • AI Adoption Is No Longer Optional 
    • The Talent Pipeline Is Showing Real Progress, and 
    • Firm Leaders Must Recalibrate Who They Want to Be 

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Staying Independent: Why Your Best Clients Hope You Turn Down Private Equity

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two men talking across table

The conversations you should be having right now.

By Hitendra Patil

There is something that consistently gets missed in the private equity conversation, and I have watched it get missed from both sides: the people inside firms that took PE money, and the independent owners watching from outside.

Independent firms hold real structural advantages that the PE model works against by design. For the right clients, those advantages are not a secondary consideration. They are the core of the relationship.
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PE Wars: The CPA Platform Economy Is Concentrating Fast

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After hundreds of deals, the data show a gravitational pull toward a handful of buyers now driving the profession’s future.

Five Top Power Players

CPA Trendlines chart showing PE-backed accounting platform power players

CPA Trendlines PE Deal Tracker: Mega-aggregators dominate the money flow as the race tightens between Ascend, Aprio, Crete, Eisner and Ryan. (Data: March 31, 2026)

By CPA Trendlines Research

The frantic pace of deal-making this past March marks a turning point. What had been described as a consolidation phase has matured into something more defined and more consequential: a platform-driven market in which a relatively small number of repeat acquirers are shaping the profession’s future.

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As the first quarter of 2026 closes, the story is no longer simply about transactions. It is about structure. The question has shifted from who is buying whom to which investment models, operating systems, and capital strategies will define the next decade of accounting.

For years, the prevailing narrative held that private equity would democratize the profession. Capital, it was said, would spread broadly across hundreds of firms, opening access to institutional funding that had never before been available. But the data tells a different story.

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