After about 30 acquisitions, is Aprio still the same firm?

Richard Kopelman, longtime CEO of top-20 accounting firm Aprio, has seen the organization through many shifts since he started out in 1992 as a staff accountant. But in the last few years, the changes have come rapid-fire.

In 2017, the Atlanta-based firm, then known as Habif, Arogeti & Wynne (HA&W), rebranded to Aprio. In 2024, it took on private equity investment from Charlesbank Capital. And since then it’s been an M&A machine, making about 30 acquisitions since October 2024. As a result, its revenue has climbed 46% from $420.8 million in 2024 to $615.9 million last year, according to Accounting Today.

Kopelman spoke with CFO Brew about how PE investment has changed the firm, why the acquisitions aren’t just growth for growth’s sake, and what he sees happening to the profession in this era of consolidation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What do you look for in a firm you acquire?

It’s really about the people and the culture of the business. We have a defined and practiced culture in our 31 fundamentals of behavior that back up our brand.

Then we look for strategic fit on the service side: Is this adding the new capabilities that our clients need, is it adding a capability that expands our reach and capabilities within a specific industry, and continues to deepen our expertise in that area?

We also look for geography...We want to ensure that we are covering the right places across the country where the total addressable market matches up with our capabilities and our needs.

How do you integrate the new firms that you acquire?

We’ve gotten really good because we’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, and I think there’s a lot of power in the data that we’ve collected…We have what we call Aprio Week. So week one, right after the merger, we have a team that is on-site with them, welcoming them to the firm. I’m often part of those…We’re really holding their hands and taking them through a white-glove process…getting them onto our technology stack, and connecting them with team members across the organization…Together we create a plan for the first 24 months that they’re part of our firm, so that over that time period they can get ingrained in the business.

You’ve spent most of your career at Aprio. Do you still recognize the firm?

I still recognize the core of who we are: the client service, the attention to our people, giving back to our communities. There are certain things that attracted me to the organization, that have attracted many of my partners and our team, and I think also it’s been part of the attraction of the firms that have joined us, because we focus on building a long-term, sustainable business. Certainly, the things that we can do, our capabilities, the technology, how we get things done has changed. 

Besides the acquisitions, what changes have you seen since the firm took on private equity investment?

Speed. I think speed really matters in today’s business world. Speed is going to be a big differentiator over the next 10 years. Investment would be the second thing that comes to mind. We’ve made significantly more and better strategic decisions from an investment perspective, and we’re seeing the results.

Do you feel that you’ve become more of a brand?

When we changed the name eight years ago, we were Atlanta-only at the time, and people were like, “What are you doing?” And [I’d say], “HA&W is well-recognized in Atlanta, and Aprio is going to be something new.” I was at a party, and a good friend of mine and client was making up a song about Aprio. I walked up, and he said “Hey, aren’t you embarrassed I’m making a song about you?” And I said, “Not at all. You never made songs up about HA&W.”

It has resonated really well as we’ve gone on the road and now expanded to a national firm…We just launched our first TV commercial in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia market. We’re test-marketing a new ad campaign.

There’s been a lot of consolidation in the accounting profession. Will smaller and midsized firms still be able to compete?

We do think that big will get bigger and small will get smaller. There is room, I think, on both ends. About that middle range, I think that story will get told over the next two years. We’ll see. We’ll see how that middle performs. Given the investments in technology capabilities, new lines of service that we might not have even heard of yet…I think there’s going to be some benefit from having scale.