Game Changer: ESOPs for CPAs and their Clients

Community Conversations November 21, 2024

Event Details

ESOPs can be a way for CPAs to keep clients that might otherwise sell to an outside firm that has its own CPA relationship. From plan and company audits to valuation, from sell-side to buy-side advice, and from M&A to managing benefit levels, ESOPs often need services from more than one CPA firm. Having someone in your firm or your network with experience in one or more aspects of ESOPs (or becoming that person yourself) can be a way to better serve your clients and to find business by partnership CPAs who need outside advisors for their ESOP clients. ESOPs need CPAs.

Beyond client relations, CPA firms have increasingly found themselves targets in the M&A market, and many of them have decided that an ESOP is the right owner, or partial owner, for their own stock. The headline making news of BDO adopting an ESOP can only increase the interest in ESOPs among CPAs.

This Community Conversation, put on by the National Center for Employee Ownership, brings together a panel of expert CPAs who have a wealth of experience serving ESOP clients and, in some cases, being ESOP-owned themselves.

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Presenters

Loren Rodgers

Loren joined the NCEO in 2005 and became its executive director in 2011. He writes extensively on employee ownership and has spoken at events around the world. Since entering the field in 1995 as a consultant, he has worked with hundreds of companies. His expertise includes all forms of employee ownership, best practices for employee ownership companies, research, effective communications, employee motivation, corporate governance, ESOP transactions and operations, and business literacy.

Scott Leach

Mr. Leach is a Director with BDO Capital Advisors, LLC. He has more than 10 years of experience in banking, leveraged lending and accounting along with five years of ESOP specific consulting work. At BDO, Mr. Leach assists with business development for the ESOP Advisory Group and the execution of transactions. Mr. Leach joined BDO after serving as a Senior Consultant with another firm helping lead the ESOP consulting and transaction execution efforts of the organization. He was responsible for initial ESOP education, feasibility studies, financial modeling, and transaction execution for newly formed ESOPs and second stage transactions.Â

Andy Manchir

Andy is a director in Katz, Sapper & Miller's Valuation and ESOP Services Groups.Â Andy helps clients understand the value of their business and advises them on succession planning options, including ESOP, third-party sales, or family transitions. He has extensive experience with feasibility studies for business owners considering an ESOP, ESOP structuring and financing, and valuations and opinions needed for ESOP formations, updates, and terminations. Additionally, Andy has performed business valuations for several other purposes, including valuations for estate and gift, mergers and acquisitions, and litigation support.Â He is an active member of the NCEO and the ESOP Association (TEA) and serves on TEA's Valuation Advisory Committee. Andy is a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), an ASA (Accredited Senior Appraiser), and a Certified Management Accountant (CMA).

Dan Markowitz

Dan is a partner at Boulay PLLP and the leader of the firm’s ESOP practice. He specializes in audit and other financial reporting engagements for public, private and ESOP-owned clients in a variety of industries. Through his work over the past 12 years, Dan has become very passionate about employee ownership and how ESOPs can play a powerful role in closing the wealth gap in the United States. As a member of the NCEO’s board, Dan aims to continue to find ways to increase the number of companies that transition from private to ESOP ownership, while counteracting misinformation about ESOPs. Finally, he is committed to providing comprehensive education to new and existing ESOP companies. In his free time, Dan enjoys spending time with his family, golfing, traveling, and coaching and playing hockey.

Sandy Shoemaker

Sandy is a partner at EKS&H, leads the ESOP services group, and has been involved in public accounting since 1990. Sandy has a depth of experience working with and advising employee-owned companies on: business transition strategies; supports educating executives on ESOP opportunities; feasibility studies and initial ESOP transactions structuring; support for bank financing through modeling; advising proper use, accounting issues, and audits of ESOPs; financial reporting by leveraged ESOP companies under GAAP.