There's more to this recession than lost savings, bailouts, foreclosures and regulation. Way more.
Case in point: A report from Thomson Reuters shows that mergers and acquisitions are down this year by about 36 percent worldwide.
“There's a recession. That pretty much sums it up,” Morton Pierce, chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf's mergers and acquisitions group, said in this Stuff article. “In circumstances like that, you have people concerned about the economy, their stock price and their growth prospects. People are much more concerned about conserving what they have rather than extending what they have.”
For CPA firms, though, Max Krotman says it might be the perfect time to buy another practice — under the right circumstances, of course.
Krotman, managing partner and general counsel of Globalforce International, specializes in sales, mergers and acquisitions of accounting firms, and he says “(a)n accounting practice is one of the safest businesses. It has led to higher incomes, more security, increased safety, and a general sense of worth. Unless the numbers are totally wrong, it has been best to buy. Go ye and do the same!”
Of course, it's not as simple as all of that. Krotman lays out five steps for making a profitable acquisition in this troubled market. Much of his advice centers on making sure your calculations for price, payments and profitability are based on near-future projections, not past performance.
More at the Expo
Krotman will present a session titled “Merger and Sale of CPA Practices” on June 17. That's Day 2 of the Maryland Business and Accounting Expo at the Baltimore Convention Center. Attendees will learn the critical points that secure succession plans and make for profitable and comfortable mergers of CPA practices. Get further details and register here.