DZH Phillips has agreed to merge in Bridgeway LLC, a financial operations consulting firm located in Burlingame, Calif. The new addition comes with eight employees, which brings the total of DZH Phillips staff to more than 80 accounting professionals and 100 employees throughout offices in San Francisco, Oakland, San Rafael and on the peninsula.
The offices in San Francisco, Oakland, San Rafael and Burlingame provide expanded access for clients and employees, who have the opportunity to remain in their current offices or move to new locations, based on personal preference and client needs. The combination also promises increased training and educational opportunities for all staff. Both DZH Phillips and Bridgeway are majority women-owned.
“Bringing together our niche focus with the depth and breadth of DZH Phillips’ more than 30 years of experience was a logical next step,” said Becky Burad, founder and owner of Bridgeway. “Our cultures and mutual emphasis on client support will make this transition an easy one, and our entire team, many of whom have been at Bridgeway for more than five years, is energized by the prospect.”
Bridgeway has provides both interim and permanent part-time financial services staffing in positions ranging from administrative support and bookkeepers to controllers and CFOs. Its clients include startups, nonprofits and real estate companies, among others, and many have leveraged the firm’s outsourced resources for several years or returned serially as new ventures are launched.
DZH Phillips, which has twice expanded its offerings through similar combinations in the past 18 months, provides the full range of accounting and advisory services across multiple industries and to individuals and closely-held businesses. Now working together with the Bridgeway team, Bridgeway Outsourced Accounting can seamlessly provide financial and tax services resources throughout the Bay Area and offers clients both day-to-day resources and highly specialized services on an as-needed and/or individual basis.
“Given the pace of growth, risks inherent in staff turnover and demand for specialized expertise at emerging and tech-focused companies, clients are increasingly seeking nontraditional and flexible means of satisfying their business services and staffing needs, including even outsourcing their CFOs,” said Tom Li, director of Bridgeway Outsourced Accounting at DZH Phillips. “The addition of Bridgeway’s experienced team adds a level of confidence and continuity to our current range of services, which also broadens our client base, both by industry and geography.”
“We have long admired the work and culture at Bridgeway and felt that they had carved out a great niche from a client service standpoint,” said Lawrence Wood, managing partner at DZH Phillips. “Our firm founding in 2009 was the product of a combination of forces much like this one, and we’re thrilled to have a third opportunity in just the past two years to bring another worthy partner into the fold. Thanks to these roll-ups, we have learned how to make the most of economies of scale and to leverage the synergies each group and individual brings to the table.”
