Eide Bailly LLP, a Top 25 Firm based in Fargo, North Dakota, is expanding in the Midwest, adding Volpe Brown & Co. LLC, a firm headquartered in North Canton, Ohio that specializes in serving McDonald’s franchises.

The deal is set to take effect on May 5. It will expand Eide Bailly’s footprint in northeast Ohio and add a team with over 40 years of experience in client accounting services, complex reporting, tax and advisory work, especially for McDonald’s franchise owner operators. 

“After meeting with Eide Bailly’s leadership and experiencing the professionalism and care shown during due diligence, I knew this was the right path forward,” said Volpe Brown founder Tony Volpe in a statement Monday. “Their values, culture, and people-first mindset mirror what we’ve built over four decades.” 

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Eide Bailly ranked No. 19 on Accounting Today‘s 2025 list of the Top 100 Firms, with $704.98 million in annual revenue, approximately 387 partners and over 3,500 employees. The deal will enable the Volpe Brown team to provide services such as business valuation, technology consulting, tax strategy and cybersecurity.

“This addition reflects Eide Bailly’s commitment to aligning with firms that share our vision of forward-thinking service, client care, and a strong internal culture,” said Eide Bailly managing partner and CEO Jeremy Hauk in a statement. “We’re proud to welcome the Volpe Brown team and continue building our presence in Ohio with people who care deeply about their clients and community.” 

Eide Bailly’s already has some employees in Canton, Ohio, but as part of the transition, they will relocate to Volpe Brown’s office in North Canton. 

Eide Bailly expanded to Ohio just last year by merging in Apple Growth Partners. Last year, Eide Bailly also sold its wealth management practice to Sequoia Financial Group. In 2023, Eide Bailly added Secore & Niedzialek PC in Phoenix, Raimondo Pettit Group in Southern California, Bessolo Haworth in California and Washington State, Spectrum Health Partners in Franklin, Tennessee, and King & Oliason in Seattle. In 2022, it merged in Seim Johnson in Omaha, Nebraska, and in 2021, PWB CPAs & Advisors in Minnesota. In 2020, it added Mukai, Greenlee & Co. in Phoenix,  HMWC CPAs in Tustin, California, and Platinum Consulting in Fullerton.

Andersen Group, the resurrected version of the former accounting giant Arthur Andersen, has made plans to go public, submitting a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The firm said Monday the registration relates to a proposed initial public offering of its common stock. But the number of shares to be offered and price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The IPO is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions, according to Andersen.

In February, Andersen announced plans to revive the Andersen Consulting brand that split off from Arthur Andersen in 2000 and eventually became Accenture. The original Arthur Andersen collapsed in the early 2000s amid a wave of accounting scandals involving audit clients like Enron and WorldCom. A group of former Arthur Andersen partners revived the Andersen brand as a tax-only firm in 2014 known as Andersen Tax. The firm quickly expanded with member firms around the world and added legal and valuation services, but has steered clear of auditing. 

It was originally known as WTAS (short for Wealth and Tax Advisory Services USA Inc.), which was founded in 2002 by CEO Mark Vorsatz and 22 former Arthur Andersen partners. Vorsatz renamed the firm Andersen Tax in 2014 after acquiring the trademarks and copyrights from Arthur Andersen LLP and Andersen Worldwide, and has since grown the network worldwide.

Andersen Global now has over 19,000 professionals worldwide and a presence in over 500 locations through its member firms and collaborating firms. In the U.S., Andersen has more than 2,000 people in 24 cities across the country.

Andersen Consulting will be offering services such as human capital management, cybersecurity, business transformation, strategy, technology, artificial intelligence and sustainability. Existing consulting clients include Abbott, BMW, Cisco, Heineken, IKEA, ING, LEGO, Mercedes-Benz, Michelin, Microsoft, Pizza Hut/Sapphire, T-Mobile and Toyota.

Semple, Marchal & Cooper LLP, a Phoenix-based firm that took over the audits of Trump Media & Technology Group last year, has filed suit against the BDO Alliance and its chairman after it was ejected from the alliance following an angry phone call.

The firm’s lawsuit alleges it was kicked out of the alliance because it took on Trump Media as a client, a contention the BDO Alliance denies.

Trump Media, the parent company of the Truth Social network founded by Donald Trump, replaced its auditor last May after the Securities and Exchange Commission shut down its former auditing firm, BF Borgers, accusing it of massive fraud and fining it $14 million. Trump Media named Semple, Marchal & Cooper as its new auditing firm, even though the firm was relatively small, only had seven people listed on its website and did just a handful of public audits.

SM&C has been a member of the BDO Alliance for 30-plus years and was a founding member in 1994, according to a lawsuit it filed in March in an Arizona court, and over that time has paid more than $2 million in fees. There was only a brief hiatus in the firm’s membership in the alliance during that time due to a conflict of interest that the firm says has since been resolved. One of its founding partners, Robert Semple, has also been a member of the Alliance Partners’ Advisory Council for approximately 10 years. The firm has remained in good standing, at least until June of last year.

The firm’s lawsuit claims that after news reports began to circulate last May that Semple, Marchal & Cooper was Trump Media’s new auditing firm, the firm’s director of assurance services, senior partner Steven Marchal, received a phone call from Michael Horwitz, executive director of the BDO Alliance, in which Horwitz questioned the firm’s decision to take on Trump Media as a client, and asked why it didn’t alert the alliance in advance.

The suit further alleges that Horwitz threatened to kick SM&C out of the alliance if it didn’t resign from the audit, and claims that after the firm refused, it received a letter from the alliance dated May 31, 2024, with an effective date of June 30, 2024, that terminated the firm’s membership.

The BDO Alliance strongly disputes the allegation.

“The allegations in the complaint are frivolous and lack any foundation in the reality of why BDO Alliance USA chose to exercise its right to sever its relationship with the plaintiff,” it wrote in a statement to Accounting Today. “While members are independent firms charged with their own professional decision-making, BDO Alliance USA has the rarely used right to sever that relationship when quality and other issues are present. Plaintiff’s effort to distort the decision to sever the relationship will be vigorously defended in the judicial process.”

SM&C’s suit claims that the termination of the firm’s membership in the alliance has created the false and misleading implication that it happened either because somehow its independence as an auditor had been compromised by its political affiliation or because of some other supposed misconduct. But the firm asserts it has not compromised its independence nor engaged in any misconduct. Instead it says the alliance wanted it to compromise its independence by allowing political views to “infect” its role as an auditor of a publicly traded company.

Semple, Marchal & Cooper declined further comment beyond the lawsuit.