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IT'S BEEN A FIXTURE IN CENtral Arkansas for more than 75 years, but Ernst & Young LLP is adapting to the current market and shifting its emphasis to northwest Arkansas, where its two-year-old Rogers office and growing business opportunities have now eclipsed Little Rock's in demand.
The national firm, which had operations in Little Rock, Fort Smith and Rogers, has almost completed a transition that will completely phase out its Little Rock location, putting more of a focus on its two northwest locations particularly in Rogers.
"Where we have had most of the growth in our client portfolio in recent years has been in northwest Arkansas," ,said David Alexander, southwest area managing partner out of E&Y's Dallas office. "There's much more of a concentration of major companies' headquarters up there, fueled by Wal-Mart and Tyson. We had to follow the market, and that's where the concentration was for us."
Actually, that's also been the case for the rest of the "big four" accounting firms in central Arkansas: Deloitte & Touche LLP and PriceWaterhouseCooper have minimal presence in central Arkansas, while KPMG pulled out of Little Rock in 2000.
"Out of our competitors, and I'm speaking of the big four, none of them have any significant presence in Little Rock," Alexander said. "We probably are the last firm to say we have to reallocate our efforts, which is unusual for a city like Little Rock. It just shows you that it's not really a big four market."
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