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Top 100 Accounting Firms List Looks Very Familiar

Mostly because the top twenty-five firms hardly changed.

1. Deloitte
2. PwC
3. E&Y
4. KPMG
5. McGladrey
6. Grant Thornton
7. BDO
8. CBIZ/MHM
9. Crowe Horwath
10. BKD
11. Moss Adams
12. Plante & Moran
13. EisnerAmper
14. Marcum
15. Clifton Gunderson
16. BTVK
17. J.H. Cohn
18. LarsonAllen
19. UHY Advisors
20. Dixon Hughes
21. Reznick Group
22. Rothstein Kass
23. ParenteBeard
24. Eide Bailly
25. WeiserMazars

The top twelve didn’t change at all and there was some shuffling amongst the firms after that, most notably Eisner and Amper whose merger catapulted them from 24 and 26 respectively to 13th on the list. Not much else to report on such a snoozer of a list but it’s worth mentioning that 45% of Deloitte’s revenues are not from assurance or tax services and this is the reason they are numero uno. Check out the entire list here.

Earlier:
Most Top Ten Accounting Firms Saw Lower Revenues, Headcount for 2009

Eisner, Amper Politziner Playing Coy on Merger Rumors

NJBiz reports that New York-based Eisner is planning to merge with Edison, NJ-based Amper Politziner & Mattia LLP. The two firms – ranked 24th and 26th in Accounting Today’s most recent list of Top 100 firms – combined would have 1,200 employes and over $250 million in revenue.

This would shoot the combined firm – working name: Eisner Amper – to 14th on the list (based on revenues) ahead of Clifton Gunderson and hot on the heels of Baker Tilly Virchow Krause.


From the looks of it, the merger would benefit Eisner’s presence in the Garden State while APM would have much better access to the NYC market.

Eisner’s CEO Charles Weinstein wasn’t reached for comment and Amper CEO Howard Cohen told NJBiz, “We have no binding legal documents with any firm at this time,” which, as far as we’re concerned, basically means that it’s a done deal and the lawyers are still sorting out the signing pages.

Of course there’s always the slim chance for a board room blowup and the whole thing gets called off but we’re all hoping for the best.

EXCLUSIVE: Amper Politziner plans merger with Eisner [NJBiz via Web CPA]

Most Top Ten Accounting Firms Saw Lower Revenues, Headcount for 2009

Accounting Today put out their annual Top 100 Firms list late last week and while it focuses on the practices in United States it give us a little bit of room to speculate about who the real contenders are for the Global Six whathaveyou.

The ranking is based on net revenues from U.S. operations but it includes a lot data on each firm including # of offices, partners, total employees, and fee split.

Deloitte runs away with this list in three of the major categories – revenues, number of partners and total employees. The Casa de Salzberg had U.S. revenue of over $10.7 billion which was greater than #2 E&Y by over $3 billion.


Here are the top 10 firms along with their revenues, number of offices, number of partners and total employees

1. Deloitte – $10.7 billion; 102; 2,968; 42,367

2. Ernst & Young – $7.6 billion; 80; 2,500; 25,600

3. PricewaterhouseCoopers – $7.4 billion; 76; 2,235; 31,681

4. KPMG – $5 billion; 88; 1,847; 22,960

5. RSM McGladrey/McGladrey & Pullen – $1.5 billion; 93; 751; 7,755

6. Grant Thornton – $1.1 billion; 37; 535; 5,414

7. BDO – $620 million; 37; 273; 2,712

8. CBIZ/Mayer Hoffman McCann – $601 million; 180; 465; 4,580

9. Crowe Horwath – $508 million; 25; 240; 2,428

10. BKD – $393 million; 31; 258; 1,891

Some other interesting information from the list includes:

Declining Revenues – Revenues for all firms dropped with the exception of CBIZ/Mayer Hoffman McCann, Crowe Horwath and BKD. KPMG had the largest drop of nearly 11%.

Big 4 Dominate – The non-Big 4 firms’ combined revenue (approx. $4.7 billion) is still less than KPMG (smallest of the Big 4).

Personnel Changes – E&Y had a percentage increase in partners of 8.7% while total employees dropped nearly 6%. CBIZ/MHM saw a 32% increase in partners while total employees decreased over 12%. Only PwC and Crowe Horwath saw net increases in the number of partners and total employees.

Audit Heavy Firms – According to the list, PwC (52%), BDO (60%), Crowe Horwath (65%), and BKD (52%) all receive at least 50% of their revenues from audit fees.

So the whole Global Six thing, as much as we like to making a BFD out of it, is a non-issue. All the firms have global connections whether it’s through their own cooperative or through an international network so to cut it off at six seems a little clique-y. We’ll flip through the AT100 for any more interesting factoids but in the meantime feel to embellish any of the information presented here.

Top 100 Firms 2010 digital edition [Free registration for Digital Edition]