Eisner LLP and Amper, Politziner & Mattia, LLP announced on Monday, August 16, that they have combined their practices to form EisnerAmper LLP. With headquarters in New York and Edison, N.J., the new entity will be the 14th largest accounting firm in the U.S., with more than $250 million in annual revenue. In a listing of top 100 accounting firms issued a week prior to the merger announcement, Inside Public Accounting ranked Eisner 24 and Amper 27.
Howard Cohen, former managing partner and chief executive of Amper, will serve as chairman of the combined firm, while Eisner’s former managing partner Charles Weinstein will serve as chief executive.
EisnerAmper has more than 1,200 staff, including 170 partners. The firm will offer comprehensive audit, tax and business advisory services for the insurance, banking and alternative finance markets (including hedge funds, private equity, venture capital funds and broker-dealers).
Beyond accounting, audit and tax, EisnerAmper’s advisory services include enterprise risk management, mergers and acquisitions, business and asset valuation, debt financing, internal audit, forensic accounting and litigation consulting, reorganization and insolvency and international expansion.
“It’s a wonderful blend of two complementary firms,” EisnerAmper partner Mike Laveman said in a telephone interview. Laveman provides tax advisory and planning services to both start-ups and well-established clients including a broad range of hedge funds, private equity funds, and broker/dealers. Laveman said the firm’s largest industry group is financial services, including some 200 private equity funds. The complementarities between the two firms are especially good in private equity, he said, with Eisner being strong in the fund area, and Amper auditing many private equity portfolio companies. The firm also serves approximately 600 hedge fund clients.
Laveman said that because of regulatory and tax issues confronting EisnerAmper’s private equity clients, “we’re going to be very busy over the next few years.” Start with the recently enacted Frank-Dodd legislation. Under the new rules, private equity funds, for the first time, are going to have to register with the SEC and be subject to all its rules, including periodic examinations. However, the legislation contains a carve-out