BDO Leads Q1 in New SEC Clients

With 11 overall new Securities and Exchange Commission clients and a net gain of eight, Top 10 Firm BDO led the nation’s large firms in the first quarter of 2014.

Among its new client were flower distributor 1-800-Flowers, cloud services and digital media company j2 Global, and food and animal safety products developer Neogen Corp. It brought in almost $5 billion in new market cap audited, with big boosts from j2, with a market cap of $2.3 billion, and Neogen, with $1.3 billion. It also added over $7.6 million in new audit fees.

Big Four firm KPMG and Marcum followed up with net gains of five clients each for the period (see “Q1 2014 Client Gains & Losses”). KPMG also came away with the most new engagements among large firms for the quarter, signing up 14. That played a major part in its topping the lists of new market cap audited, new assets audited, and new audit fees (see “New Client Leaders”). Among KPMG’s big grabs were American Airlines (following its merger with U.S. Airways), liquefied natural gas provider Cheniere Energy, online travel research company TripAdvisor, and financial services company SEI Investments, which together account for over $34 billion in market cap.

 

Beyond the big firms
Terry L. Johnson CPA of Florida led the gainers in the first quarter, bringing on 18 new clients (see “Overall Engagement Leaders”) — many of them from Patrick Rodgers CPA PA, whose registration with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board was revoked. Johnson topped the list for net new clients among smaller reporting companies (see “Audit Leaders”).

Anton & Chia, of Newport Beach, Calif., also picked up 18 clients (netting 14), most of them from a related set of funds from which Rochester, N.Y.-based EFP Rotenberg had earlier retired as auditor, according to the Auditor Carousel blog.

Denver-based Cutler & Co. also picked up a large number of new SEC clients from Ronald Chadwick, who is retiring, according to reports.

Data for the quarterly rankings are provided by Audit Analytics, a premium online intelligence service delivering audit, regulatory and disclosure analysis. Reach them at (508) 476-7007, info@auditanalytics.com or www.auditanalytics.com.

Note: In the original posting of this article, the "Audit Leaders" chart listed KPMG's results incorrectly. It has been updated.

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