Overview
With a deep understanding of the legal, regulatory, and market forces affecting the accounting services industry, McDermott’s accounting firm transactions team provides practical, business-driven counsel that helps clients achieve their strategic goals. We represent accounting firms as buyers, sellers, and joint venture partners, as well as parties from outside the accounting profession, including private equity firms, wealth management companies, overseas investors and others that are pursuing opportunities within this dynamic sector. We also advise accounting firms on the strategic design and implementation of employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) transactions and provide them with ongoing legal counsel on ESOP-related regulatory and governance matters. Our ESOP team also has extensive experience representing trustees and lenders in a wide range of ESOP transactions.
The lawyers in McDermott’s accounting defense practice are dedicated to the sector and bring substantial experience related to the regulatory requirements and challenges of accounting firm transactions. They represent domestic and international accounting and consulting firms in various matters, from regulatory investigations to civil litigation, and routinely counsel clients on a variety of day-to-day risk and compliance issues, including matters related to alternative practice structure arrangements, independence, professional standards, inspections, ownership and naming requirements, reporting, and licensing.
Our M&A lawyers are consistently recognized by Chambers USA and Legal 500 USA for the quality of their counsel and service and are regularly listed on Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, MergerMarket, and other league tables for their deal volume. We draw on our extensive, collective experience to help industry players clarify short- and long-term priorities; identify potential targets; and negotiate, document, and close sophisticated, complex transactions. In addition to the accounting firm industry, we represent clients in physician practice management and several other professional services industries, including consulting, tax, and valuation firms.
With our lawyers practicing in nearly two-dozen global offices, the accounting firm transactions team can provide responsive, effective advice across borders and in local jurisdictions worldwide. Leveraging unsurpassed regulatory knowledge, we execute effective and efficient due diligence; engage regularly with regulators; draft confidentiality agreements, offers, and term sheets; prepare competitive bid submissions; identify and manage potential barriers; and ensure compliance with relevant laws and regulations.
Our capabilities extend well beyond traditional transactional matters and directly address specific issues that arise within the highly regulated, human-capital-based accounting industry. Our team is deeply integrated with McDermott’s other core practices, including our leading Antitrust, Environmental, Finance, Intellectual Property, Labor and Employment, Litigation, Private Client, Securities, and Tax Groups. Together, we deliver targeted, coordinated guidance that avoids cookie-cutter solutions and responds to the unique forces that drive the accounting services industry.
In recent years and currently, McDermott’s accounting firm transactions team:
- Advised a leading advisory and consulting firm that operates in an alternative practice structure in connection with the acquisition of one of the United States’s largest public accounting firms
- Currently is advising multiple private equity firms in connection with alternative practice structured investments in accounting firms
- Advised multiple accounting firms in connection with establishing alternative practice structures and receiving investments by private equity firms
- Advised one of the US’s leading accounting and advisory firms in connection with the establishment of its ESOP
- Currently is advising a regional accounting advisor firm in connection with the establishment of its ESOP
- Represented strategic buyers in numerous acquisitions of accounting firms or professional services firms
- Advised a leading accounting firm in the establishment of an international joint venture in India
