PKF O’Connor Davies LLP, a Top 30 Firm based in New York, has added DGC LLP (formerly DiCicco, Gulman & Co.), an accounting, tax and advisory firm based in Boston.
The New England firm will join as DGC, a division of PKF O’Connor Davies. The deal represents an effort by PKFOD to strengthen its advisory services in various industries and drive growth in the New England market. DGC specializes in sectors such as real estate and family offices.
As part of the deal, DGC partners Laurie Austin and Donald Troy will become New England co-managing partners at PKFOD, and David Sullivan will join the firm’s Executive Committee.
DGC has offices in both Boston and Woburn, Massachusetts, enabling PKFOD to expand in New England. “It’s not just geographical footprint,” said PKF O’Connor Davies managing partner Kevin Keane. “It’s also a really big cultural combination between them and us. We’ve known each other for quite a while now, and we’ve worked together on certain assignments. We really had a nice cultural bond. Added to that, geographical footprint is becoming more important to our client base.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Keane predicts the combined firm will have $275 million in annual revenue this year, approaching $300 million in revenue by this time next year. PKFOD ranked No. 27 on Accounting Today’s 2021 list of the Top 100 Firms, with $202 million in annual revenue prior to the merger.
DGC reported $37.2 million in revenue for 2020, and was one of the top independent firms in the New England region. It is bringing a team of 200 accounting professionals, including 24 partners, to the firm. PKFOD currently has a little over 1,000 employees right now, including about 130 partners.
DGC provides private client, business tax, assurance and accounting, along with business advisory services. The firm serves high-net-worth families and individuals, architecture and engineering businesses, real estate firms, technology companies, professional services firms, consumer products and retail businesses, health care providers, hospitality businesses and restaurants, manufacturing and distribution companies, and not-for-profit organizations.
“We went through and compared our list of service lines that we’re in and the service lines that DGC were in and there were a number of overlaps, for example in real estate,” said Keane. “We have a really good real estate group, but we do a lot of work in hospitality, where they didn’t do as much, so the combination of those together becomes a bigger and stronger offering. The family office and family consulting side of our practice really chimed together nicely.”
The deal will also help PKFOD build its advisory and consulting practice in areas such as litigation support services. “We have a whole flow chart of where we want to be five years from now, and DGC fills in a lot of areas where we had groups but maybe didn’t have enough depth, such as litigation support,” said Keane. “DGC really has a top-notch litigation support leader and group. That really extends our consulting and advisory services.”
DGC managing partner Laurie Austin leads the family office and high-net-worth tax side of DGC, he noted.
“We weren’t necessarily looking to merge into another firm, but we’ve gotten to know the folks at PKFOD for a number of years now,” said Austin. “They were our peer review firm, so they know us fairly well. Many of our managers have worked together on various projects. We had always intended to stay independent here in the Boston area, but about a year or so ago, we really started to assess what that would mean. We’ve done a great job of building different niches in different service areas over the years, but I think we were at a crossroads. To get to the next level, what would that really take for us to do that on our own, versus joining somebody who had already done a lot of what we were looking to do?”
She and the other DGC partners concluded that it made sense to combine with PKFOD. “It became very apparent when you looked at the time, effort and investment, we felt like we could do it on our own, but that would detract from servicing our clients and would be such an effort,” said Austin. “It was just really natural. Knowing our friends at PKFOD, they certainly showed interest in us, and it seemed great. They had a lot of the services we were looking to build. We have a ton of overlap in how we service our clients, and how we treat our teams was very similar. Getting to know them, I can say we’ve become very friendly, and we feel like, once you’ve done some projects together, you feel like we can work with these guys. They are kind of like us. Despite some sports rivalries, maybe we talk a little bit differently in our different regions, but we just have a ton in common.”
Last year, PKFOD added
