KPMG, BDO, and Grant Thornton were the big winners among the top twelve accounting firms when it comes to new SEC client gains. But perhaps the biggest story of the quarter comes from Midwestern firm KLJ & Associates, which managed to win an impressive 37 new clients in Q3 alone. We’ll come back to them further down in this post, but first let’s start with a roundup of the biggest firms.
BDO has been on a tear for a long time now. With a net gain of five clients this past quarter, BDO now has a net increase of 19 clients for the year to go with the 57 net gain the firm had in 2013.
With a net gain of six clients, KPMG had another strong quarter as well. The Big Four firm is standing on a net gain of 21 SEC clients for the year. Grant Thornton is also having a good year, with 12 new clients overall.
As with last time, the table below presents a comprehensive view of the gains and losses of the major global and national firms. It shows how many SEC audit clients each auditor gained or lost, and also the auditor from or to which the client was either won or lost. (Click to expand the image.)
In the following tables, we disaggregate the auditor changes by the size of the companies gained or lost, as represented by the companies’ filing status. The first table shows auditor changes for Large Accelerated Filers, i.e., those with a worldwide public float of more than $700 million.
The next table presents wins and losses for Accelerated Filers, which are companies with public float between $75 million and $700 million.
And finally, the last table presents the top five gains and losses for Smaller Reporting Companies.
As you can see, KLJ & Associates had a great quarter, gaining 37 new clients. This was largely due to their acquisition of Silberstein Ungar, which as you can see had a net “loss” of 42 clients.
As reported in Accounting Today, KLJ managing partner Kent Jensen made a statement noting that KLJ is “excited about the expansion of our firm to Michigan, plus growth in our SEC audit practice as well as our expansion into the franchise sector.”
The Accounting Today roundup has some additional charts that are very interesting, including a breakdown of new client leaders by market cap, audit fees, and more.
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