Top 50 Firm Ascend acquired KSDT, effective Sept. 1, marking the firm's largest transaction to date.
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KSDT, based in Miami, is one of Accounting Today's 2025 Top Firms to Watch and ranks No. 9 as a Gulf Coast Regional Leader. The firm was founded in 1976 and reported $38.2 million in revenue last year. The deal adds five offices, 29 partners and 276 staff to the Ascend platform. In addition, KSDT's India team will integrate into Ascend's offshore captive entity, Sentient Solutions for Accounting, based in Hyderabad, India. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"Ascend is the partner we've been waiting for, one that matches our ambition without asking us to be anyone but ourselves," KSDT CEO Jeffrey Taraboulos said in a statement. "We built KSDT on a simple idea: take extraordinary care of people and the growth will follow. This merger lets us do that at a bigger scale and a faster pace with more opportunity for our team, more capability for our clients, and more room to build the kind of firm our industry needs. We're keeping our culture, our personality and our entrepreneurial spirit, and adding the technology, resources and national reach to accelerate everything that makes KSDT special."
As is common with these private equity deals, KSDT will adopt an alternative practice structure, separating its non-attest and attest services. Tax and business advisory services will be provided by a new entity affiliated with Ascend. Attest services will be provided by an independently owned and licensed CPA firm.
"It's an honor to have a firm of KSDT's caliber join and strengthen Ascend," Ascend CEO David Wurtzbacher said in a statement. "Their entrepreneurial, service-oriented spirit, which has led to their success in one of the most significant markets in the U.S., is a perfect fit for the Ascend model. We amplify what is special about the strong, regional, independent firm with the resources, technology and collaboration of a top 25 firm."
"Of the more than 40,000 public accounting firms in the United States, fewer than a handful have climbed into the profession's Top 200 in a single generation," Ascend president Nishaad Ruparel said in a statement. "KSDT is among that small group, and it is clear to us what makes the firm exceptional — leadership that sets a high bar and connects work to purpose, a culture that aspires to be the best workplace for the best people, and a vibrant middle-market in South Florida that has taken to the firm's fiercely independent roots and personal, context-rich service. These are special qualities, and we are building Ascend so that the team at KSDT can compound their unique momentum for generations."
