Two major mergers gave Top 100 Firms Plante Moran and Prager Metis commanding leads in terms of new Securities and Exchange Commission audit clients in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Top 15 Firm Plante Moran’s October merger with Denver-based Top 100 Firm EKS&H accounted for 30 of its 33 net and new engagements in Q4 (see “Plante Moran and EKS&H finalize merger”).
In the meantime, New York City-based Prager Metis merged in Hackensack, N.J.-based Paritz & Co., in October according to clients’ 10-Ks; the combination accounted for 25 of its 26 net and new engagements.
No other firms brought on double-digit numbers of client. It was a slower quarter among the major firms, for instance: Crowe and BDO USA tied for net new clients there with three each, with BDO coming in second for new clients, with four, after Marcum’s eight new clients. (See “Q4 2018 Client Gains & Losses” for the major firms table, and see the full list of net new engagements at the bottom of this article.)
Clients by filing status, and more
Given their commanding lead in new clients, Plante Moran and Prager Metis naturally dominated the lists of new clients by filer type. Plante came tops in both new accelerated and new non-accelerated filers, while Prager Metis led among smaller reporting companies, with Plante coming in second in that category. Large accelerated filers were fairly evenly distributed, with a large number of firms grabbing one apiece, and Top 10 Firm Crowe grabbing two.
Ranked by net gain. Ties are broken by overall number of client wins, then by alphabetical order.
Sheer client size helped Big Four firm EY top two other categories: new market capitalization audited and new assets audited. One client – home builder D.R. Horton accounted for $13.2 billion of EY’s $13.6 billion in new market cap audited, as well as $14.1 billion of its $21.7 billion of new assets audited (natural gas distributor WGL Holding contributed another $7 billion). Plante Moran did lead in terms of new audit fees, with $7.4 million, with EY in a close second, with $6.2 million in new fees.
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.
OVERALL NET ENGAGEMENT LEADERS
Ranked by net engagements; ties are broken by lower number of new engagements, then by alphabetical order. * New engagements include significant gains from the same previous auditor, often an indication of a merger or other change in firm structure, or that some of the new engagements have a corporate affiliation, as with Plante Moran, which added 30 new clients from merger with EKS&H.
