Eide Bailly, a Top 25 Firm based in Fargo, North Dakota, is expanding its presence in Southern California by adding Hamilton Tharp LLP. a firm headquartered in Solana Beach, its third M&A deal in a week.

Hamilton Tharp dates back over 45 years and provides services such as tax planning, trust and estate consulting, family office solutions and accounting to clients in the biotech, real estate and health care industries.

“Bringing Hamilton Tharp into Eide Bailly is an exciting step forward in our continued growth,” said Eide Bailly managing partner and CEO Jeremy Hauk in a statement Monday. “Their strong client relationships, deep technical expertise, and commitment to personalized service align seamlessly with our values. We’re proud to join forces with a team that shares our passion for helping clients thrive.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Eide Bailly ranked d 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 Hamilton Tharp team includes four partners and 14 staff members. 

“While this is a relatively small acquisition in terms of size, the real significance lies in the strategic value it brings to Eide Bailly,” said a spokesperson. “This move strengthens our presence in California — particularly in the Solana Beach area — and reflects our continued commitment to serving clients throughout the state with a local, personalized approach backed by the resources of a top 25 CPA and advisory firm.”

Hamilton Tharp managing partner Tina Tharp wanted to expand her firm’s services for clients and create provide more growth opportunities for staff while staying true to their culture. “We were intentional about finding the right fit,” Tharp said in a statement. “Eide Bailly brings the scale and expertise we were looking for, but just as importantly, they share our values and people-first approach.” 

Last week, Eide Bailly announced two other M&A deals: with Roycon, a Salesforce consulting  firm based in Austin, Texas, and Volpe Brown & Co., a firm headquartered in North Canton, Ohio. Eide Bailly expanded to Ohio 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.

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

The most important issue is staff recruitment, training, retention and work conditions. While each of these is a separate issue, the whole staff issue is a neglected area when it should be the top area of concern. This has been so since I started practicing, and I am perplexed that meaningful actions are not taken to remedy the situation. I did, and many firms do, and they are much more successful than the others, but too many do not deal realistically with this.

Recruitment: Starting salaries have not kept up with overall business conditions, and I do not believe they have remained competitive when about 15 years ago they were at the top of the curve. This can be easily corrected by firms increasing their starting salaries. Many refer to the added 30 credits as a hindrance, but I don’t believe this is a more important objection than the lower starting salaries being offered. Staff recognize having master’s degrees as an enhancement that makes themselves more valuable and they feel good about it … after they get their degree.

Training: Training is a significant area and is done by many firms, particularly smaller practices, as a cookie cutter obligatory process, not focused on the staff person’s responsibilities and expected work assignments. Firms send staff to available CPE courses when they should be developing customized CPE, either in their firm or in partnership with similar firms or through their state society committees. (I’ve done all of these and it works.) Firms also need to become training organizations using error disclosure as immediate training opportunities and deliberate on-the-job training by everyone in a supervisory position. Firms’ cultures have to be to train and develop. In conjunction with this, all supervisors need to be trained on how to train.

Retention: Turnover is terrible. Two years ago, a Big Four firm had 25% staff turnover. Last year it was 17% (and they were voted one of the Top 100 best places to work both years! Huh?). Many firms neglect “marketing” the benefits of working for them and take the current staff for granted. Retention needs a deliberate effort by every supervisor, manager, partner and owner. It needs work and will pay the best dividends. This effort might not stop a person from leaving, but it could retain them for an extra year or more. An attitude that you want them to stay forever also helps.

Work conditions: Tax season hours are untenable at most firms, while some larger firms maintain tax season conditions after tax season ends or add mini periods of extended hours. In my own informal and unofficial exit polls, most people provide as the primary reason for leaving a lack of work-life balance. I know people from top 10 firms that leave public accounting for reasons that indicate a complete noncompliance by their employers with the stated “favorable work-life and caring atmosphere and culture” in those firms’ recruitment brochures. Firms show a total lack of attention to this.  

Solution: This is an industry problem, but it can only be solved one firm at a time. My solution is to acknowledge the problem at your practice and then make every change necessary to eliminate that problem. You might not be able to do it immediately, but you can start immediately and work on these issues as they come up while starting a serious and meaningful training program. Every change needed can be implemented within a year. Let that year start now!

Do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected] with your practice management questions or about engagements you might not be able to perform. 

Big Four firm KPMG announced the release of its new Tariff Modeler tool, made to help users prepare for and respond to ongoing trade policy changes. 

The solution draws on client-specific historical data, current tariff information, and the user’s organizational objectives to generate a tailored interactive dashboard that can provide detailed financial information with trade-related insights and data visualizations. People can examine their trade data, identify areas of risk, and understand the financial impacts of said risks. The solution also does in-depth scenario modeling, letting users look at a number of different hypotheticals and examine how tariff policy impacts them. Users can also refine insights by isolating high risk areas based on product, vendor, and country of origin. 

Users get access to comprehensive tariff analysis that provides detailed insights into current and potential tariffs affecting your products and markets; real-time updates on the latest tariff changes and regulations; customizable reports to help make informed decisions and communicate effectively with key stakeholders; and an intuitive interface made to be understandable to those who are not trade experts. 

“Today’s volatile global trade landscape requires companies to fundamentally rethink how they anticipate and respond to policy shifts,” says Rema Serafi, KPMG’s vice chair of tax. “By leveraging AI to transform vast streams of global trade data into actionable intelligence, organizations can rapidly model complex scenarios and make more informed decisions. Those who embrace this AI-powered approach will not only navigate current uncertainties but also position themselves to capitalize on emerging opportunities in this new normal of trade complexity.”

Llamadex Investment

KPMG also last week announced a minority investment in a company, LlamaIndex, that makes data infrastructure for large language models. 

LlamaIndex’s suite of services enables organizations to connect their proprietary data to large language models (LLMs). The company’s flagship offerings include LlamaParse, which provides parsing for complex documents with embedded tables and figures, and LlamaCloud, a managed ingestion and retrieval service for Retrieval Augmented Generation implementations.

KPMG’s investment is spearheaded by KPMG Ventures, which is dedicated to collaborating with and investing in early-stage start-ups in areas like agentic AI, data infrastructure, cybersecurity, and more. KPMG Venture’s minority equity investment follows recent investments in other AI-driven startups including Ema, Wokelo and Rhino.AI.  

“As we continue to innovate and push boundaries in applied AI, a robust data foundation is essential for building effective AI systems, particularly sophisticated knowledge assistants and agentic solutions,” said Swami Chandrasekaran, KPMG principal for AI and data labs. “LlamaCloud and LlamaIndex provide the frameworks necessary to access, curate, and ingest data at-scale, enabling KPMG to develop differentiated, industry-specific solutions that deliver measurable business outcomes for our clients.”

KPMG’s investment was made in parallel to another made by the data and AI company Databricks. Together, these investments will accelerate the development and adoption of LlamaIndex’s innovative LlamaCloud and LlamaParse services, which have emerged as critical tools for enterprises implementing production-grade AI solutions.