ACG Acquires Andrews Smith Lowery

Accounting & Consulting Group has acquired the Roswell, N.M.-based accounting firm Andrews Smith Lowery & Co. for an undisclosed sum, expanding its agricultural client base.

ACG, based in Albuquerque, has seven offices, mostly added through acquisitions. With the acquisition of Andrews Smith Lowery, ACG will be bringing over three new partners and 11 employees to its Roswell office once the office space is expanded, according to marketing coordinator Marla Gorena. Five of them are CPAs and two others are CPAs from Mexico who received their U.S. citizenship about a month ago and are now working on attaining their CPA designations in the U.S. The acquisition became official on Aug. 15. They will be moving into ACG’s Roswell offices in November 1 once the expansion is complete.

“We feel it’s really important to keep the local office service feel that you seem to lose in a big firm, so even though we’re over 100 employees strong and have over 40 CPAs, each of our offices provides that local services feel to our clients, and that’s what we’re trying to keep,” said Gorena.

She noted that ACG has done several other acquisitions in the past two years, including three in Roswell. In late October of last year, the firm acquired the Roswell-based practice of Bobby Carroll, CPA, a small practice with just him and a few support staff. In early October of last year, ACG acquired Kirkland & Co. of Farwell, Texas. The five employees there, including two partners and three CPAs, moved to ACG’s office in Clovis, N.M., about a half-hour away.

“That acquisition, and the one with Andrews Smith Lowery, has given us the largest agricultural practice in the state,” said Gorena.

On July 1, 2010, ACG acquired Miller & Associates, another CPA firm based in Roswell. It was at that time ACG opened its Roswell office. Once the Roswell office expands in November, it will be ACG’s second largest office, with 29 employees, just a bit smaller than the 34 employees in the Albuquerque office. However, ACG is planning to further expand the Albuquerque office soon.
“We’re actually working on another merger that we’re hoping to finalize by the end of this year in Albuquerque,” said Gorena. “We’re always on the lookout for new opportunities.”

ACG has been working with Andrews Smith & Lowery since November 2005 and talking with the partners about a merger. “We knew they would be a good match for us with their quality control and their culture,” said Gorena. “Ray Roberts, our managing partner, is very active in the peer review area of the practice. That’s how we find most of our acquisitions. He peer reviews them first, and if their quality control is on par with ours, we start talking with them and seeing if they’re interested in merging with us.”

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