Supporters say private equity (PE) has given the public accounting profession the shakeup it badly needed, bringing capital, strategic discipline, and urgency to a traditionally cautious profession. Critics fear PE is too focused on profits and efficiencies, turning off both employees and clients who long for a more personal approach to business practice.
Wherever you stand, the numbers are unmistakable: The largest certified public accounting (CPA) firms are leaning in, pursuing a level of growth that would otherwise be difficult to achieve through organic means alone.
Take Chicago-based tax advisory firm Prosperity Partners, for example. The firm has acquired nine businesses and grown from $13 million in revenue to about $73 million in a few short years. Additionally, top 25 firm Wipfli, already a behemoth with $612 million in net revenue reported in 2025, has made 34 acquisitions over the past decade, with the pace of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity expected to accelerate rapidly. In May, Wipfli acquired CompliancePoint, a risk advisory and managed services firm based in Duluth, Ga.
The common denominator in this explosive growth is PE. In Prosperity Partners’ case, Unity Partners made a majority investment in 2023, and Lightyear Capital followed in July 2026. Wipfli sold 40% interest to New Mountain Capital in 2025.
Since the first notable PE investment in 2021, when TowerBrook Capital Partners bought a majority stake in New York’s Eisner Amper, dealmaking has sped forward like a bullet train. Now, a majority of the top 30 U.S. CPA firms have received an infusion of capital from various PE firms, allowing them to acquire smaller firms, fund technology advancements, attract talent, and modernize operations. Those top 30 firms, in turn, have acquired roughly a third of the rest of the top 100.
These transactions are more than isolated success stories. They reflect a fundamental shift in how investors view the accounting profession. Once considered a conservative, relationship-driven industry, CPA firms are now viewed as scalable businesses with significant untapped potential. So, what changed?
PE firms tend to look for businesses with predictable revenue, opportunities for operational improvement, and room to scale. CPA firms check each of those boxes—and then some.
Industry observers point to several characteristics that’ve made CPA firms particularly attractive investment opportunities.
One of the main attractors is that the roughly $150 billion accounting market is large but fragmented, made up of 40,000 to 50,000 firms.
“Not only can you grow organically, but you can do it through M&A deals,” says Jay Comerford, partner at Lightyear Capital, the 26-year-old PE firm that invested in Prosperity Partners. “Because the industry hasn’t really had PE investments until recently, there are multiple avenues where a PE firm could help a management team increase growth and improve the operations and efficiency of a business.”
He notes that the accounting market has consistently grown organically at about 7% to 9% a year: “It’s a large market that’s growing nicely, and in the last 30 years, the industry has only seen three down years in revenue, with the largest decline being 3%.”
Jennifer Kim, MBA, partner at Flexpoint Ford, a Chicago-based PE firm, pointed to another factor attracting investors to CPA firms—the vast array of advisory services.
Advisors have built strong relationships with chief financial officers, and Kim says that trust creates cross-selling potential for offering additional services beyond tax and audit: “That flexibility makes it all the more attractive for PE to want to get in and find a platform of their own.”
Flexpoint Ford made a minority investment in Elliott Davis, a top 100 firm based in Greenville, S.C., about a year ago.
Additionally, CPA firms draw clients in every year for tax, audit, or other services. Those recurring services make up about 75% of the work, keeping business steady and resilient through ups and downs in the market.
Brad Werner, CPA, MBA, partner and board member at Wipfli, sums up the appeal to PE investors this way: “You’ve got sticky, recurring clients, diverse revenue streams, and a business that traditionally hasn’t disrupted itself all that much.”
Werner also believes New Mountain Capital was attracted to Wipfli because of the maturity of its advisory and consulting practice, high client experience scores, and decades of experience going to market by industry. On Wipfli’s side, firm leaders appreciated New Mountain Capital’s deep experience in the sector through its majority investments in both Citrin Cooperman and Grant Thornton. New Mountain Capital-backed Grant Thornton Advisors also recently made a blockbuster announcement that it was acquiring CBIZ in a $5 billion deal and taking it private.
Of course, investment potential is only half the story. The more important question for firm leaders is whether PE is delivering on its promises. For Elliott Davis, Prosperity Partners, and Wipfli, the PE partnership appears to be playing out well.
Flexpoint Ford, for example, has assisted Elliott Davis in investing tech dollars fruitfully and improving operational efficiencies. In fact, Kim notes that leaders have accomplished all they planned to do and more in the last year: “We’re ahead of budget, we’ve executed on M&A, we’ve executed on organic hires, so we’ve been really pleased with our investment.”
Kim also points to another success in the PE firm’s investment— keeping Elliott Davis’ work culture strong. Since the deal closed, the firm has successfully hired leaders from other firms: “To be able to effectively recruit partners from other CPA firms, you need a really strong culture behind it,” Kim stresses. “Having that proof point [that Elliott Davis remains a place where experienced partners want to work] is really powerful.”
Although each firm’s strategy differs, executives describe a common theme: Access to PE capital has accelerated initiatives that likely would’ve taken years to accomplish on their own.
Jeremy Dubow, CPA, MST, CEO and co-founder of Prosperity Partners, says the business has flourished since the pact with Unity Partners: “We’ve launched major strategic initiatives that I don’t think we could’ve done in three years—it would have taken us at least seven to 10 years.”
He says the firm started a 30-person offshore team in India, rebuilt its technology stack, and initiated an employee ownership program that’ll ultimately distribute $18 million in proceeds across the employee base.
Prosperity Partners, which now has 32 partners, more than 210 employees, and 10 offices, is expected to top $100 million in revenue this year and reach triple that in the next five years.
“It’s about building the best firm in the space, not necessarily the biggest,” Comerford adds. “Hopefully, we can help the Prosperity Partners team reach their potential and create a leading business.”
Dubow appreciates how PE looks at accounting through a different lens. Accountants have traditionally run “lifestyle” businesses, where the measure of success is salaries versus building true enterprise value by investing in people and technology and enforcing strategic goals: “That way of thinking hasn’t historically existed in our industry—PE has accelerated that.”
Acceleration is a key word for Werner, who expects a much faster pace of change under New Mountain Capital, which has added expertise in M&A and artificial intelligence (AI): “For us, it was about finding a partner that could help us accelerate and amplify the things we were already doing.”
While early partnerships are producing encouraging results, the larger question is what happens next. Most observers believe the profession is still in the early stages of PE investment, with the next wave likely to reshape firms well beyond today’s largest players.
Kim believes dealmaking will remain strong: “A lot of PE firms that don’t have an investment are leaning in even further.”
Werner says there’s been so much focus on the top 50 firms or so in the last few years that it’ll be interesting to see whether the same level of attention will be paid to smaller firms in the coming years. He also wonders if the industry will see some transformation at the very top again as well, noting that Grant Thornton Advisors’ acquisition of CBIZ was unexpected.
Of course, AI might also change the PE landscape. Werner sees it as an existential threat, which could impact the amount of capital flowing into the profession, although it remains to be seen: “We’re in such early days of how AI is going to disrupt professional services.”
A strong endorsement that PE is working well so far is the fact that deals are in their second or even third round. In January 2025, a Blackstone-led acquisition of New Mountain Capital’s majority stake in Citrin Cooperman marked the first “flip” of a major accounting firm from one PE owner to another in a then landmark $2 billion transaction. In March 2026, Lightyear Capital reduced its majority control of Schellman through a strategic partnership with Private Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives. Similarly, in July 2026, Lightyear Capital acquired a majority stake in Prosperity Partners, though Unity Partners retains a minority stake.
Dubow sees a growing sophistication among PE buyers as well: “The depth and knowledge of PE in accounting today is so much different and more advanced than it was three years ago. The market is saturated with potential buyers, but they’re discerning buyers looking for the best firms—the ones that are growing the fastest, have had success with M&A, are fully integrated, and have an offshore team.”
Comerford sees three types of CPA firms in the future—the consolidators, the firms being consolidated, and those that’ll be left behind: “Those are the three buckets that firms are going to be in. The firms that have historically relied on price increases for revenue growth or lack differentiation are going to be more challenged from a growth perspective going forward.” He believes the firms that’ll win will be those that become “more AI data-centric and tech-enabled so they can deliver a better, faster, and cheaper service to their clients.”
Five years into PE’s push into the public accounting space, it’s clear the profession’s appeal goes well beyond a temporary acquisition trend. Investors see a profession with recurring revenue; resilient client relationships; strong cash flow; and significant opportunities to expand advisory services, improve technology, and consolidate a highly fragmented market. As firms continue to modernize and diversify their service offerings, those characteristics are becoming even more compelling.
That doesn’t mean every CPA firm will attract PE—or should pursue it. But the firms drawing the greatest interest share many of the same qualities: consistent organic growth, a differentiated market position, scalable operations, strong leadership, and a willingness to invest in the future.
As Dubow observes, today’s buyers are no longer simply looking for CPA firms; they’re looking for well-run businesses with the potential to grow faster and create greater enterprise value. If the past five years are any indication, PE’s interest in accounting is less a passing trend and more a reflection of how valuable the profession has become.
