Two corporate accounting offices that sit across the street from one another in Center City are to become one. Corporate accounting and business consulting firm BDO USA LLP, which is based out of Chicago, is set to acquire Philadelphia accountancy firm Asher & Co Ltd and will see all of the firm’s ten partners and over 100 staffers move in with them.
The relocation will join Asher, which is currently based at 1801 Market, to the 60-employee branch of BDO at 1800 Market. “We all want to be under one roof,” says Joseph Beach, the managing director of Asher & Co Ltd, who notes, however, that he is as yet unsure which home will house the pair of them. Beach says that he is to remain under BDO and that nobody will be losing their jobs as a result of the deal. Neither of the companies was willing to discuss the financial terms of the deal.
Philadelphia has been described as “an office we’re trying to rebuild” following the exit of a series of partners from what was once of the company’s largest offices there in the mid 2000s, according to Wayne Berson, the chief executive officer elect of BDO.
BDO is now trolling for midsize and corporate customers in the mid-Atlantic, with the firm having acquired Argy, Wiltse and Robinson, a McLean-based firm twice as big as Asher, earlier this year, and McBride Shopa, which is based in Wilmington, two years ago in 2010.
Lance Grooms