accountingtoday.com
May 2012 | accounting today 15
practitioners and facilities, manufacturing
and distribution, life sciences and technology, financial services, the public sector, and
construction.
The benefit there lay in deepening the
combined firm’s expertise. “All three offered
the basic services and value-adds like IT services and wealth management,” Cunningham explained, “but in each of these practice areas, one of our firms offered a greater
depth. All of us became stronger from the
collective expertise — virtually every area of
practice improved.”
BETTER, NOT BIGGER
Going for ward, Warren Averett will be maintaining its focus on value, not growth for
growth’s sake.
For instance, rather than immediately
subsuming the three firms under one name,
they’ll be known as the Warren Averett Wilson
Price Division, the Warren Averett O’Sullivan
Creel Division and the Warren Averett Kim-
brough Marino Division. “All three firms had
great reputations in their market area and
significant brand equity,” said Cunningham.
“We want to continue to enjoy that brand eq-
uity for a period of time, and then transition
to one brand name of Warren Averett. But we
didn’t want to give up the reputation — and
the 30 or 40 years of building up that reputa-
tion — overnight.”
They will also be working to integrate the
three firms across industry and service lines.
“It’s a very good way of integrating the prac-
tices of the firms we’ve just joined,” Cunning-
ham said. “We’ll put people on those teams
across our geographies, and it helps us spread
our values and our knowledge.”
Even in the integration of the firms, the
emphasis on providing value to clients is re-
lentless. “Our focus has not necessarily been
on how do we take three firms and have them
do everything the same way,” Cunningham
pointed out. “We have exceptional talent
throughout, and our focus is on making sure
that each and every client across the orga-
nization experiences that value consistently
‘Everyone
could see
the vision of
why we were
doing this, so
they were
excited.’
and comprehensively. If you have great tal-
ent in Huntsville, and a client in the Gulf
Coast needs it and doesn’t get it, then you’ve
failed. Our challenge is to take what we have
and create a result for the client. Our biggest
challenge is what happens with the client, not
what happens internally. With a lot of merg-
ers, the focus is internal; our focus is how to
use this combined expertise to create value
for our client base.”
And while Warren Averett, Wilson Price
and O’Sullivan Creel have grown through a
number of mergers and acquisitions over the
years, and exploded in size and geographic
reach from this most recent tie-up, those
considerations aren’t driving potential M&A
plans in the future. “We are not selecting
specific markets and saying, ‘We need to be
there,’” Cunningham said. “We are looking
for a breadth of client base that matches our
current client base, which includes public
and large, privately owned companies. If
the geographic area has that available and
if a potential candidate firm can also add to
our expertise — as our last combination did
— that’s very attractive to us.”
“Our goal is to add value for our clients and
opportunity for our people,” Cunningham
repeated. “We are looking at any solution that
moves us towards those two goals.” AT
