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CHICAGO - Seven months after its initial public offering failed, Centerprise Advisors - a onefell-swoop consolidation of five regional powerhouse CPA firms - has sprung to life as a privately held company financially backed by institutional investors.
Chicago-based Centerprise emerged as one of the nation's largest business services firms by consolidating seven core members with combined revenues of $141.5 million. They include the CPA firms Mann Frankfort Stein & Lipp of Houston; Follmer, Rudzewicz of Detroit; Urbach Kahn & Werlin of Albany, N.Y.; Grace & Co. of St. Louis; and Simione, Scillia, Larrow & bowling of New Haven, Conn.
The non-CPA members are Brunswick Integrated Computer Solutions, an Akron, Ohiobased technology consulting firm that serves as a base for Centerprise's proposed national technology consulting practice that will add more technology firms across the country; and Oakland, N.J.-based insurance services firm Insurance Design Administrators.
The member firms have received undisclosed amounts of cash and stock in Centerprise in exchange for becoming wholly owned subsidiaries. In a model similar to most other accounting firm consolidations, the members will continue conducting attest work in companies separate from Centerprise.
While other consolidators, such as CBiz and American Express, have built themselves gradually by acquiring one firm at a time, Centerprise is the largest of the industry's few single-transaction consolidations of multiple firms.
About half of the deal's $250 million value is from stock in Centerprise, and the remaining $125 million came from investors that include Chicagobased investment banker BGL Capital Partners; a banking syndicate led by LaSalle Bank and Bank One, also of Chicago; a group of mezzanine-level investors; and GE Financial...