The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has been working on some research related to private equity investment in accounting firms around the world and as part of that, they’ve generously released some numbers for us to reflect on. You guys like numbers, right?
According to them, the number of accounting firms worldwide that have private equity in the mix top more than 1,000. One thing we found especially interesting related to this:
177 “initial” or “direct” investments have facilitated 875 subsequent “indirect” or “roll-up” acquisitions for a total of 1,052 “impacted” accountancy firm transactions between 2015-2025.
So, the research explains, for every one direct private equity deal, there are at least seven indirect ones driven by PE. We expect this figure will be much higher once someone perfects the burgeoning AI-forward, roll-up practice model.
Private equity activity is at a flurry in the United States and England and active though less concentrated across Europe as well as Australia, Chile, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and The Philippines. Only one African country appears on the IFAC world map of PE activity: Morocco.
The research notes that in North America, PE investment largely happens at bigger firms with audit practices but in Europe firms without audit practices are the ones getting outside investment.
Their paper includes a lot of stuff about ethics, challenges, and benefits that could be of interest to firm leaders entertaining private equity investment of their own, if that’s you you can access it here.
All hail the money-sperm and may it find a money-egg to procreate.