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Listicle of the Day: INSIDE Public Accounting’s Top 500 Firms For 2022

If there’s anything we love here at Going Concern it is an accounting firm dick-measuring contest. Or a “pissing match” should you prefer a milder phrase. Whatever you call it, we love when firms are pitted against one another based on impartial metrics like revenue. INSIDE Public Accounting has blessed us with a fresh Top 500 Firms list which means lots and lots of measuring. 500! That’s a whole extra 100 firms this year from the Top 400 they usually do. Thank you, INSIDE PA, thank you. Let’s not waste any time and just get to it.

Here are your top 25 firms for 2022. We’ve included 2021 INSIDE Public Accounting Top 400 rankings in parenthesis for comparison:

  1. Deloitte (1)
  2. PwC (2)
  3. EY (3)
  4. KPMG (4)
  5. RSM (5)
  6. BDO (6)
  7. Grant Thornton (7)
  8. FORVIS (14 and 17*)
  9. CLA (8)
  10. Baker Tilly (9)
  11. CBIZ & MHM (11)
  12. Crowe (10)
  13. Moss Adams (12)
  14. Plante Moran (13)
  15. CohnReznick (16)
  16. Marcum (15)
  17. EisnerAmper (18)
  18. Eide Bailly (19)
  19. Wipfli (20)
  20. Andersen (21)
  21. Armanino (22)
  22. WithumSmith+Brown (25)
  23. Carr, Riggs & Ingram (23)
  24. Citrin Cooperman (24)
  25. Cherry Bekaert (not top 25 in 2021)

As you can see, BKD and DHG leapfrogged their peers by combining forces with the FORVIS merger which bumped them up from the 14th and 17th spots they occupied individually on last year’s list. Withum crawled up a couple spots from last year and props to Cherry Bekaert for breaking the top 25 this year with $292,972,000 in revenue. Crowe has dipped yet again after falling to 10th place last year from 9th in 2020.

The top four firms remain unchanged from 2021, way to go Deloitte for holding on to that #1 spot with almost $23 billion in revenue. By comparison, the 400th firm on the Top 400 list — Delaware’s Santora CPA Group — came in with a little more than $8 million. Big 4 firms made up nearly 71.5% of the total revenue of last year’s IPA Top 100, this year that chunk is 70.7%. Because these four firms would throw off stats due to sheer size, INSIDE Public Accounting shares some key highlights for the 100 largest firms in the United States minus Big 4. The remaining 96 firms on the Top 100 represent $29.4 billion in total revenues and employ more than 125,000 staff collectively. Some highlights from those firms:

  • Organic growth (excluding mergers) came in at 12.9%, a substantial increase from 6.8% in 2021.
  • Close to 100 acquisitions (of both traditional CPA firms and non-CPA firms) were reported by this group, pushing the overall growth rate to 15.6%, up from 8.3% in 2021.
  • Organic growth in net income this year was at 18.9%, up slightly from 17.4% in 2021.
  • Average equity partner billing rates are now at $494 per hour for the IPA 100.
  • Professional staff turnover (CPAs and other client-serving professional staff) averaged 18.7% for the IPA 100, with more than 1 in 3 firms averaging more than 20% professional staff turnover.
  • One out of every 10 equity partners / owners in a CPA firm is not a licensed CPA.

‘Grats to all who made this year’s list, surely pizza parties will be had by all to celebrate.

Related:
INSIDE Public Accounting Releases Its Annual Rankings and Performance Metrics of the Nation’s Largest Public Accounting Firms [INSIDE Public Accounting]
Listicle of the Day: INSIDE Public Accounting’s Top 400 Firms For 2021 (UPDATE) [Going Concern]
Listicle of the Day: No Major Shake-Ups In 2020 INSIDE Public Accounting Top 100 Firms [Going Concern]