Marcum LLP has merged in Lautze & Lautze CPAs & Financial Advisors, an accounting firm in San Francisco and San Jose, Calif., effective June 1.
Marcum, based in New York, already has three California offices in Irvine, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The firm ranked 16th on Accounting Today’s 2016 list of the Top 100 Firms, with $412.43 million in annual revenue.
The deal will add 60 professionals, including four partners, to Marcum. “Lautze & Lautze has a history of professional excellence and long-standing client relationships that naturally complements Marcum’s business,” said Marcum managing partner Jeffrey M. Weiner in a statement. “We welcome the entire Lautze & Lautze team to the firm. We look forward to leveraging our combined resources to improve and expand services to our clients, and to partnering in our continued mutual growth and success.”
Lautze & Lautze has provided audit, tax and consulting services to individuals, California businesses and nonprofit organizations for more than 70 years. The firm’s industry specialties include real estate, professional services and manufacturing, with specific expertise in servicing private schools and private foundations.
“Lautze & Lautze will play a strategic role in expanding Marcum’s presence and deepening our service capabilities in the Northern California market, both in San Francisco, where Marcum has an existing office, and in San Jose,” said Philip J. Wilson, Marcum’s California partner-in-charge. “Marcum’s IT Risk & Assurance Practice, which manages our cybersecurity, information risk management and technology consulting services, will be a particular asset to the Silicon Valley office.”
“As a national firm, Marcum gives the Lautze team access to a deep bench of talent and expertise that will expand the ways we can serve our clients, while giving the Firm a larger footprint in the Greater Bay Area,” said Anne Marie Bianchini, former managing director of Lautze & Lautze.
Allan D. Koltin, CEO of Koltin Consulting Group, who advised both firms on the merger commented, “Marcum continues to show its commitment to expanding in California and their merger with Lautze should make them a major player in the Bay area. With this merger they are now over $50 million in California and I wouldn’t be surprised to see another merger or two from Marcum here in the next year.”
Koltin said he began working with Lautze about one and a half years ago on their strategic planning.
“During the course of putting a five-year plan together, we decided to explore upstream as a simultaneous strategy to growing as an independent firm,” he added. “We looked at larger firms already built out in the Bay area as well as firms not in the region but desirous of wanting to expand here. In the end we found Marcum was a great fit both in terms of its presence already in California but also the resources and depth it could bring to Lautze. It also had a highly entrepreneurial culture which played well with Lautze’s existing and future partners. Hats off to Annie Bianchini for leading the merger process from start to finish. Annie was about what was best for her people and clients throughout the entire journey.”
