Ascend is adding Atlanta-based accounting firm Wilson Lewis, effective Dec. 1.
The deal — Ascend’s first in the Southeast — will be the private-equity-backed platform’s ninth of the year, and is expected to take it over $100 million in revenue.
Ascend acquires the nonattest parts of entrepreneurial middle-market firms in the U.S., and then supports their growth with capital and a growing list of other resources in areas such as leadership development, talent acquisition and technology.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Wilson Lewis will adopt the alternative practice structure that is usual for PE deals, breaking into two businesses: WL Advisors LLC, which will offer tax, business advisory and other nonattest services, and Wilson Lewis Duluth, an independent CPA firm that will offer attest services.
A $15 million firm, Wilson Lewis was founded in 1999, and has nine partners.
“I am really encouraged by the quality of firms that are taking it upon themselves to actually do something about all of the challenges that we’re all taking about at every conference we go to,” Ascend founder and CEO David Wurtzbacher told Accounting Today. “This ninth acquisition is a signal that the Ascend model is needed, and I think we’ll have an ever bigger year in our second year than in our first.”
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“There are some remarkable things that Wilson Lewis is doing that have already been passed along to our other firms through CEO Josh Crisp’s participation in our Ascend Growth Model Bootcamp earlier this year,” he added. “Everyone across Ascend is also celebrating that with the addition of Wilson Lewis, we are a $100 million revenue firm. Size isn’t our north star, but we are leveraging our significant scale to fuel a radically different talent strategy to serve those who are our north star — our people.”
“We are a rapidly-growing $15 million firm facing the same challenges as other firms our size,” said Crisp, in a statement. “How do you deal with the severe talent shortage in our industry, and how do you maintain scale to keep up with the curve on tech stack and infrastructure? Absorbing a smaller shop would only compound those problems, and we had no desire to merge up and become part of a machine where we would lose our unique culture. Everybody is talking about these challenges, but Ascend is actually doing something about them.”
Ascend has made a series of investments this past year, including Opsahl Dawson in Vancouver, Washington, in January; ATKG in San Antonio, Texas, in May; LMC in New York City in June; Sentient Solutions for Accounting, an offshore services provider in India and Mexico, in July; and Goering & Granatino in Overland Park, Kansas, in October.
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