BDO USA LLP has expanded to Utah by merging in Mantyla McReynolds LLC, a firm based in Salt Lake City.
[IMGCAP(1)]The deal will add 10 partners and 54 additional staff members to BDO. Mantyla McReynolds LLC earned approximately $10 million in annual revenue last year, giving BDO USA a total of approximately $1.2 billion in combined revenue, according to BDO USA CEO Wayne Berson. Mantyla McReynolds managing partner Kim McReynolds said his firm was on track to earn $12 million in fiscal 2016.
BDO, based in Chicago, ranked 7th on Accounting Today’s 2016 list of the Top 100 Firms in the country, while Mantyla McReynolds ranked 12th on the Regional Leaders list for the Mountain Region.
“We’ve been through a period of rapid expansion and Utah is a region that we’ve targeted,” Berson told Accounting Today. “We’ve been getting a lot of requests for work in Utah, but we’ve never had a BDO office there.”
Mantyla McReynolds has been a member of the BDO Alliance for eight years and worked closely with BDO over the years.
“Given Mantyla McReynolds’ history of success in Salt Lake City, and our familiarity with them as a member of the BDO Alliance, the expansion made sense,” said Berson. “We’ve worked with them on some joint projects. In a sense they’re almost part of the family already.”
The deal is expected to close on July 1, but Mantyla McReynolds is already integrating some of its technology systems with BDO’s.
[IMGCAP(2)]“We’ve been in the BDO USA Alliance for about eight years so we got to know BDO very well through that process,” said managing partner Kim McReynolds. “We started with them on the basis that we really were only interested in their resources and the ability to use the name in our marketing and recruiting, but what we learned is that each of the resources that we needed were connected to an individual and each of those individuals turned out to be really caring, knowledgeable and capable. We came to really enjoy our association with the BDO partners and staff, and they were always more than willing to reach out and provide whatever technical advice we needed. Through that process we even began to develop some joint engagements together, so we’ve been involved with them really closely for most of the eight years we were part of the alliance. Our company has grown dramatically over the past three to four years, as BDO has, and the clients that we are seeking to bring into our firm are more sophisticated and technical and larger. The BDO brand appeals to them so rather than indicate to a prospect or an accounting recruit that we are a part of the BDO Alliance, it gives much more emphasis to the resources available if we can just say we are BDO USA.”
Mantyla McReynolds specializes in servicing clients in the technology and life sciences, real estate, hospitality and entertainment, equipment leasing, outdoor recreation and ski resorts, auto dealerships, and manufacturing and distribution industries. Those specialties fit in well with BDO.
Utah has a “Silicon Slopes” area where technology startups are flourishing. “Salt Lake is very much a middle-market economy, and those middle-market companies are the targets for what BDO is interested in, so there’s a great synergy capability that we anticipate,” said McReynolds.
“Their client base in technology and the life sciences, real estate, hospitality, manufacturing and distribution aligns really well with the BDO industries that we’ve been promoting,” said Berson. “It comes together well. We have the industries covered. We have geography covered by getting a firm that we know and are comfortable with, so we end up expanding our overall reach around the country.”
Over the past three years, BDO has expanded rapidly through both M&A deals and organically, entering 21 new cities and adding firms in 12 existing markets. Berson anticipates further expansion in the year ahead.
“We look at the major markets and we certainly are continuing to have discussions with numerous firms around the country because there’s a lot of interest in joining BDO,” he said. “From a geographic standpoint, we’ve added a great deal to our presence in the Central and Atlantic regions, and moving forward we’d like to add to our critical mass in the Southeast region of the country. But beyond geography, we are looking to add resources to areas of growing demand. We look to our clients and prospects as to what it is they are looking for, and we’re looking to add in the areas of private client services, wealth management, transaction advisory, outsourcing, cybersecurity, data analytics, risk advisory and actuarial services. These are all areas that we are looking at, but we see opportunities talking to a number of firms that bring these strengths to the table.”
