Growth is Top Priority for Top 100 Firms

Source: Public Accounting Report

In this guest column, Gary Shamis, senior managing director of Cleveland's SS&G Financial Services, says that “The only market with high-growth potential is larger middle-market corporations.” To attract these clients, the top 100 non-Big-Four firms have made growth their number one priority.

Shamis believes that hiring Big Four laterals as a growth strategy is difficult and often unsuccessful because these laterals often lack rainmaking skills. A niche-vertical strategy, Shamis argues, “is the only solid strategy for organic growth.”

M&A has become the growth strategy of choice, leading to a lot of discussions between Top 100 firms and other firms with revenues in the neighborhood of $5 million or more. All firms should ask themselves whether they want to merge (and, if so, with whom). Firms that choose not to merge need to develop a strategy for staying independent.

For the complete article, read "Where Is the Puck Going?"

From Public Accounting Report, June 2014, http://www.cchgroup.com.