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CBIZ completes Marcum acquisition | Accounting Today

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CBIZ has completed its acquisition of Marcum LLP, creating a combined firm with approximately $2.8 billion in annual revenue.

The megadeal between Cleveland-based CBIZ and New York-based Marcum was originally announced in July with publicly traded CBIZ acquiring the non-attest assets of Marcum. Concurrent with the closing of the $2.3 billion cash-and-stock deal, the attest business of Marcum was acquired by CBIZ CPAs (formerly known as CBIZ MHM, short for Mayer Hoffman McCann), a national independent CPA firm with which CBIZ has had an administrative service agreement for over 25 years. Mayer Hoffman McCann announced in August that it was changing its name to CBIZ CPAs.

“We are pleased to have successfully closed the acquisition of Marcum, which represents a major milestone and new chapter for CBIZ, our people and our shareholders,” said CBIZ president and CEO Jerry Grisko in a statement Friday. “Now, with over 10,000 team members, we will offer our clients an enhanced breadth of services and depth of expertise unmatched in our industries all aimed at helping them grow their business. With even deeper subject matter expertise, industry resources, service lines and insights, we can provide actionable advice and new and innovative data-driven products and solutions. We are excited to welcome the Marcum team to CBIZ and look forward to a bright future together.”

CBIZ building exterior
CBIZ building

Courtesy of CBIZ

CBIZ and MHM together ranked No. 11 on Accounting Today‘s 2024 list of the Top 100 Firms. CBIZ reported $1.6 billion in annual revenue last year. Marcum ranked No. 13 and has approximately $1.2 billion in revenue and more than 3,500 professionals. Combined, CBIZ will have more than 10,000 team members and over 135,000 clients. CBIZ provides finance, insurance and advisory services in more than 120 offices in 33 states, while Marcum has 43 offices in major markets across the U.S.

Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board charged Marcum with systemic quality control failures and violations of audit standards, mainly in connection with its audits of special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, clients. The SEC imposed a $10 million penalty, while the PCAOB simultaneously levied a $3 million penalty against the New York-based firm for violating its rules and quality control standards, its largest ever penalty against a firm that isn’t part of a global network like the Big Four. The SEC later charged Marcum’s national assurance services leader at Marcum LLP with failing to address and remediate a number of deficiencies in the firm’s quality controls.

Both CBIZ and Marcum have participated in many M&A deals. CBIZ has done over 120 acquisitions since 2008. This year alone, in March, CBIZ acquired CompuData, a Philadelphia-based accounting solutions provider that specializes in software for small and midsize organizations. In February, the firm announced it acquired Erickson, Brown & Kloster LLC in Colorado Springs, Colorado, effective Feb. 1, 2024, while Mayer Hoffman McCann acquired the attest assets. In February of last year, CBIZ acquired the nonattest assets of Top 100 Firm Somerset CPAs and Advisors, an Indianapolis-based firm, while MHM acquired the attest assets.

In June, Marcum Technology, the tech arm of Marcum, acquired the IT Enhanced Managed Services division of Top 10 firm CliftonLarsonAllen. In May, Marcum acquired Croskey Lanni PC, a firm based in the Detroit area with an office in Boca Raton, Florida, and Simon, Krowitz, Meadows & Bortnick, a firm based in Rockville, Maryland. In February, Marcum merged in Powers & Sullivan, a firm based in Wakefield, Massachusetts. In January, Marcum acquired Federman, Lally & Remis LLC, a firm in Farmington, Connecticut. Last year, Marcum added McCarthy & Co., a Regional Leader headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, and Melanson, P.C., a Regional Leader firm in Merrimack, New Hampshire. In 2022, Marcum merged in E. Cohen and Co., CPAs, a Regional Leader firm in Rockville, Maryland, and completed a megamerger with another top firm, Friedman LLP, as well as a merger with RotenbergMeril CPAs, a firm in Saddle Brook, New Jersey.

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Accounting

IAASB tweaks standards on working with outside experts

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.

The proposed narrow-scope amendments involve minor changes to several IAASB standards:

  • ISA 620, Using the Work of an Auditor’s Expert;
  • ISRE 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements;
  • ISAE 3000 (Revised), Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information;
  • ISRS 4400 (Revised), Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements.

The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.

In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.  

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Tariffs will hit low-income Americans harder than richest, report says

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President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings. 

Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.

Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.

Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed. 

The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.

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At Schellman, AI reshapes a firm’s staffing needs

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Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition. 

Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time. 

“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said. 

One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load. 

“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai. 

Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies. 

“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.

However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area. 

“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai. 

As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales. 

“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai. 

While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves. 

“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”

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