private equity

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.

MORE in Private Equity:

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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Matt Tait: Why Franchising Is the Next Big Thing for CAS | Big 4 Transparency

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Why private equity may accelerate – not kill – entrepreneurship in accounting.

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Big 4 Transparency
With Dominic Piscopo, CPA

Decimal CEO Matt Tait joins Dominic Piscopo to explain why his CAS firm is franchising its playbook, how it drives 50%-plus margins with queue-based delivery and daily book maintenance, and why private equity may accelerate – not kill – entrepreneurship in accounting.

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Tait says the biggest accounting story right now isn’t just AI, it’s the industry’s next operating model.

On the Big 4 Transparency, Tait says Decimal started as a “different” CAS and bookkeeping firm while simultaneously building an internal operating system for running a modern accounting shop. In under six years, Decimal has served 1,000+ businesses and grown to 100+ employees – and now it’s taking its playbook to market through franchising. READ MORE →

The PE Takeover: Audit Problem? What Audit Problem?

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1,000 Deals Show Where PE Money in Accounting Really Goes.

By CPA Trendlines

Private equity’s expansion into accounting is widely framed as a takeover of public company audits. But new data shows that’s only a myth.

MORE Private Equity | The 7.6x Machine: How Grassroots Firms Are Taking Private Equity for a Ride | Deal Tracker: PE Platforms Accelerate the Grab for CPA Firms | With Apax Sale, CohnReznick Starts Building a National Platform | Unicorns and Funerals: From the Demise of Botkeeper to the Rise of Basis AI | Jeremy Dubow: Raising the Bar for Talent | Big 4 Transparency | Twelve Great Reasons to Merge In a Smaller Accounting Firm

A close look at almost 1,000 PE deals over the last 10 years shows only about 10% involve firms with assurance practices. The reason is as clear as it is simple: The vast majority of PE and PE-backed deals are for firms too small to play in the audit business.

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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.

MORE Private Equity | Deal Tracker: PE Platforms Accelerate the Grab for CPA Firms | With Apax Sale, CohnReznick Starts Building a National Platform | Unicorns and Funerals: From the Demise of Botkeeper to the Rise of Basis.ai | Jeremy Dubow: Raising the Bar for Talent | Big 4 Transparency | Twelve Great Reasons to Merge In a Smaller Accounting Firm

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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With Apax Sale, CohnReznick Starts Building a National Platform

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First rollup: Smith Schafer & Associates.

By CPA Trendlines Research

CohnReznick has closed its funding deal with Apax Partners, formally planting one of the world’s largest private equity firms inside the upper tier of the U.S. accounting profession.

MORE Private Equity

The transaction, three years in the making, positions Apax as the majority owner of CohnReznick’s non-attest business, while the firm’s audit and attest services remain separate.

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Jeremy Dubow: Raising the Bar for Talent | Big 4 Transparency

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Why equity is the new standard for talent retention.

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Big 4 Transparency
By Dominic Piscopo, CPA
For CPA Trendlines

Jeremy Dubow, CEO and co-founder of Chicago-based, private-equity-backed Prosperity Partners, explains how entrepreneurship in accounting has shifted from demand-driven to capacity-constrained, and why transparent equity programs are becoming the new standard for talent retention.

MORE Dominic Piscopo | MORE Private Equity | MORE Pay & Compensation

Dubow joins Dominic Piscopo on Big 4 Transparency to discuss how accounting-firm entrepreneurship and the operating model required to scale have changed since he co-founded NDH in 2003. NDH later sold to private equity and rebranded as Prosperity Partners, which Dubow described as a case study in how firms are adapting to labor constraints, expanding client complexity, and rising expectations around technology and talent strategy.

Quotables
“The demand for accounting services is greater than it ever has been. The challenge is providing the service at a high level in a labor-constrained environment.”
“AI in and of itself is not right now the solution to solve all our problems. Using automation and offshoring gives us the operational leverage to create that capacity.”
“I recognize that my people are being attempted to be poached every single day of the year.”
“Why have a stock price if you don’t disclose what it is?”
“‘’If I worked that 80-hour week, you should too.’ Well, guess what? That doesn’t work anymore.”

Dubow argues the profession has shifted from a demand constraint to a capacity constraint. Client needs continue to expand, but firms increasingly struggle to staff and deliver services proactively at scale.

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Brannon Poe: Is Your Firm PE-Ready? | The Disruptors

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Most firms aren’t. Here’s how to change that.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

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Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Brannon Poe, founder of Poe Group Advisors, says the key to a successful firm transaction is fit.  

“I think having a good deal is really about having a good fit,” he says. Besides technical skills, “you have to have management styles that mesh well, you have to have client service philosophies that are aligned,” he explains.  

MORE STREAMING: Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm |  Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time | Vanover: 5-Star Firms Don’t Bill by the Hour | Kless: Profit Is a Result. Flourishing Is the Purpose | Whitman: Build Culture on ‘Progress,’ Not Change | Shein: No PE? No M&A? No Problem | Hood and Weber: Time to RISE | Proctor: Turn Dumb Ideas into Brilliant Solutions | Carter-Gray: How 1 Poor Review Strengthened the Firm | Hartman: Upwork to “40 Under 40” in 3 Years |

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For sellers, choosing the right buyer matters as much as the price. “I find that the sellers in particular, who keep their focus on fit and choose the right buyer, usually are the happiest with their exit.” 

The last few years have created favorable conditions for accounting firm sales, but not for everyone.  

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