Well they’ve been talking about a deal for months now, here it is: Grant Thornton US is merging in Grant Thornton Ireland. As told to us by a tipster and also this Irish Times article that just went up:
Grant Thornton Ireland and Grant Thornton US are to merge their advisory and tax businesses, in a deal backed by New York private equity firm New Mountain Capital.
New Mountain Capital is the same private equity firm that took a majority state in our GT in March.
The GT Ireland business has about 2,800 staff, which includes 72 partners. As always with these kinds of deals, the audit side will remain its own thing.
Talk had been that GT US wanted to merge with Grant Thorntons UK and Ireland both, no word on what happened with the other half of that potential tie-up.
Grant Thornton Ireland and US firm to merge non-audit businesses [Irish Times]
I’m sure there are Partners making bold claims to staff about how great this will be for them but deep down they know well that they are destroying the concept of professional services.
It’s clearly a flawed profession with a questionable model- but the same way that junior doctors wade through sh%t until they make it to the big bucks, that’s how this worked. If you swallowed the crap, liked it (or maybe tolerated it) and were good at it then one day you’d maybe have a chance to get into the big pool.
That’s what each of the Partners here went through to get to the point they’re at. They have taken from the generation (s) below them to make their partner dough now, but have now double dipped and taken from the future generations.
I’m not sure how those Partners can look in the eye of their staff but I suppose they don’t care because they have the cash. Some PE crowd who have run out of other industries to vaporise will pick up the tab. Who can blame the Partners really, we’d all do it.