Top 15 accounting firm Marcum has officially been absorbed into top 11 firm CBIZ, as the 2.3-billion-dollar megadeal that was announced on July 31 officially closed on Friday.
As a result of the Marcum acquisition, CBIZ will have combined annual revenue of approximately $2.8 billion, more than 10,000 team members, and over 135,000 clients. The Cleveland-based firm is expected to vault over Grant Thornton for seventh spot in the ranking of the top 10 largest U.S. accounting firms based on revenue.
“We are pleased to have successfully closed the acquisition of Marcum, which represents a major milestone and new chapter for CBIZ, our people, and our shareholders,” Jerry Grisko, president and CEO of CBIZ, said in a statement on Nov. 1. “Now, with over 10,000 team members, we will offer our clients an enhanced breadth of services and depth of expertise unmatched in our industries all aimed at helping them grow their business. With even deeper subject-matter expertise, industry resources, service lines, and insights, we can provide actionable advice and new and innovative data-driven products and solutions. We are excited to welcome the Marcum team to CBIZ and look forward to a bright future together.”
CBIZ, which is a publicly traded accounting services provider (NYSE: CBZ), has acquired the non-attest business of Marcum, while Kansas City, MO-based CBIZ CPAs (formerly Mayer Hoffman McCann), the national independent CPA firm with which CBIZ has had an administrative service agreement for more than 25 years, has acquired Marcum’s attest business.
It’s the largest acquisition in the 37-year history of CBIZ.
The cash-and-stock transaction is valued at approximately $2.3 billion. It’s expected that approximately half of the transaction consideration will be paid in cash and the remainder shares of CBIZ common stock. Consideration for the transaction would include $1.1 billion in cash and 14.4 million shares of CBIZ common stock, based on a per-share price of $76.84, the Wall Street Journal reported last July.
Founded in 1951 as Marcum & Kliegman, New York City-based Marcum has 43 offices in major markets across the U.S. and serves more than 35,000 clients. The firm employs more than 3,500 professionals. Marcum provides a variety of professional services, including tax, attest, accounting, and advisory services, as well as technology solutions and executive search and staffing services for entrepreneurial companies, midcap and micro-cap SEC registrants, and high-net-worth individuals.
The Marcum brand has now been retired.
Jeffrey Weiner, who had been Marcum’s chairman and CEO since 2017, has left the firm and took over as CEO of Integrity Automotive, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Since the deal was announced this past summer, Weiner has written a six-part series of articles on LinkedIn entitled, “The Marcum Retrospective,” about his career at the firm.
In the fifth installment of the series, he shed some light about how the deal with CBIZ originated, “On September 8, 2021, I received an unsolicited email from Michael Henry at Deutsche Bank explaining that his team had worked on my friend Charly Weinstein of EisnerAmper’s private equity transaction and asking if Marcum had any interest in a conversation. As I’ve done for the past 28 years, every time we had a major decision to make, I walked into our Vice Chairman David Bukzin’s office to see what his thoughts were. We decided it was worth a response. And as they say, the rest is history. Michael, his partner Bob Kitts, and their extraordinary team, including Sam Ross, Jenna Gammer, and Andrew Mo, have worked tirelessly for the last three years and guided us to the CBIZ transaction.”
In the final article in the series, written before CBIZ shareholders voted to approve the Marcum transaction, Weiner wrote, “Marcum is in my blood. It’s part of my identity. It’s my other spouse, my sixth child. I’ve given Marcum the last 43 years of my life, and it has treated me extraordinarily well in return. I couldn’t have asked for a better professional career.”
He continued, “My wife Tracy, and children Isaac, Leo, Lily, Kate, and Max don’t know a world without Jeff working at Marcum. It’s been an outsized part of our family.
“From signing checks at the kitchen table to phone calls in the car to visits to the office working through family vacations, to all of the Marcum swag (water bottles, apparel, mouse pads, pens, pads, etc.), to participation at Marcum events (the Workplace Challenge, the Day of Service) Marcum has been intertwined with their lives forever. And they graciously, without choice, accepted the fact that Marcum was always there, weekdays, weeknights, weekends; it was part of me, and they shared me with Marcum.
“None of us can accomplish whatever it is we set out to do without the unwavering support of those close to us. I’ve been very lucky that my family gets me and knew that Marcum was the unofficial eighth member of our family.”
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