On April 21, Baker Tilly and Moss Adams announced a $7 billion merger to support the sixth largest consulting CPA company in the U.S. by Hellman & Friedman and Valeas Capital Partners. MHA, a British network member of Baker Tilly, completed a £98 million IPO on April 15, 2025.
Grant Thornton Advisors USA, backed by New Mountain Capital, and Ireland expanded its multinational platform on April 23, which merged branches from the UAE, Luxembourg and Cayman Islands with additional collocation. UK GT has previously received private equity funds from Cinven.
In India, Grant Thornton Bharat wants to sell shares in its holding company Grant Thornton Advisory Pvt Ltd to raise funds. “It's about corporatization and capitalization because we aim to build the first global professional services company led by India,” said CEO Vishesh C Chandiok.
He said PE funding has allowed companies like Grant Thornton to challenge the status quo by offering stock options to employees, thus undermining the 100-year-old partner structure. With the value of the stock, partners can expect to earn more than 3 times the annual revenue. True partners want to move from being an employee-like, relatively fixed income person to an owner-share of GT Bharat's value. “Since it will be an investment for some professionals for the large six in India, it will be a professional investment, it will be a professional step, and it will be an investment for multinational companies. So far in the industry, Uniqus Consulting raised $20 million in April, and Knav received a few investments from Nikhil Kamath in Zerodha in September 2024. Among the four large and large structures, NETWORKS is not a strictly controlled structure, which allows stable-capable rural companies to invest across other geographical locations on other sites.
Requires scale
Facing pressures to integrate, inheritance barriers and efforts to develop non-audited businesses, Indian professional services companies may need to pursue mergers or private capital to fund technology upgrades and scale.
“I have hired a banker in the United States to reconnaise for a small CPA firm,” said Jeenendra Bhandari, partner at Indian professional services firm MGB. He said: “The corridors in India have great potential, and the Indian back-end capabilities support the front-end of the United States. Progressing, access to capital will be a key competitive advantage.”
“At present, we are a well-capitalized and debt-free company, but when the time is right, we will be willing to explore growth capital from private equity,” said Ajay Sethi, founder and managing partner of Baker Tilly Asa India LLP. “Acquiring funds should have clear growth and deployment plans.”
Globally, private equity-led mergers are changing professional services sectors, but in India, mergers and acquisitions are still rare, controversial, often hampered by partner conflicts, power struggles and a strongly entrenched personality-driven culture. After Indian companies initially integrated into the trend of the four major networks in the 1990s and early 2000s, they rarely had jobs.
In June 2002, Andersen India merged with EY, but in November 2003, a leadership conflict left CEO Bobby Parikh losing internal elections to serve as CEO Rajiv Memani, son of then-Chairman Kashi Memani, prompting several partners to export. Years later, BMR&Co made up of Parikh, Mukesh Butani and Rajiv Dimri in 2017, with Deloitte and KPMG acquiring different sections, highlighting the industry’s integration challenges.
In February 2007, PwC announced plans to merge ABBIT RSM’s tax and consulting practices into itself. But by 2009, several senior partners, including famous tax expert Dinesh Kanabar, walked out and eventually joined KPMG. Kanabar continues to launch Dhruva consultant in 2014.
Transfer model
Globally, the momentum of this deal has been established in 2-3 years, which is driven by a private equity pursuit of stable regular income, a fragmented market that is matured, scalable business model and sticky, loyal customer base.
An investor group led by Blackstone has taken a majority stake in Citrin Cooperman from the Johor Bahru capital, while Centerbridge Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners support Carr Riggs & Ingram, TowerBrook invested in Carr Riggs & Ingram in Eisneramper, and Parthenon Capital in Cherry Bekaert. Meanwhile, the $300 million Ex-Ey and PWC partners from Warburg Pincus are launching four major challengers, Unity Advisors.
Indications that the U.S. BDO raised $1.3 billion from Apollo in 2023 to fund employee trusts and refinancing debt, while Charlesbank-backed Aprio acquired RSM US’s PS+ practice in March 2025.
Experts say that scale is no longer optional, and it is a must-have for survival. Medium-sized companies must expand geographically, invest in technology, adopt a leaner ownership model, globalize to increase cost efficiency, or risk being included in the lining.
