Accountancy firms Chapman Flood and Rawlinson Hunter Mazars are to merge in a move which will create a firm with annual fee income of about £4 million, 100 staff and nine partners.
Rawlinson Hunter Mazars is ranked 15th in the Irish market in terms of fee income in 1997 with £2.2 million, according to the latest survey of accountancy firms from Finance magazine. Chapman Flood was in 18th place with fee income of £1.7 million.
The merger would make the firm the 12th largest in the market, based on the 1997 fee income figures. It could be the 10th largest if the proposed mergers of four of the Big Six firms - Price Waterhouse with Coopers and Lybrand and KPMG with Ernst and Young - are completed. Rawlinson Hunter Mazars was set up in 1980 and has 55 staff and four partners. Clients include Irish Distillers and University College Dublin. It specialises in corporate work, consultancy and information technology services. Chapman Flood was set up in 1981 by David Chapman and David Flood. It has 45 staff and five partners. It has very active corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions divisions.
Mr Chapman said that staff numbers would not be reduced as a result of the merger. The two firms have complementary skills and client bases, he said. "We expect that the specialist skills of both firms will add a new dimension to the Irish marketplace and provide a viable alternative in the rapidly changing accountancy marketplace. Rawlinson managing partner Mr Joe Carr said that the concept of a large European partnership was attractive in light of the euro and European integration programmes. The merged operation will be linked internationally with Mazars and Guerard, one of the largest independent firms in France which operates in 39 countries and has 2,500 staff throughout the world.
"Mazars has developed a significant presence in the European market while retaining in each country an expertise in the small and medium enterprises and institutional sectors," he said. Mazars is a serious competitor in Europe to the Big Six Anglo-American firms, he added.
Meanwhile, a survey released yesterday showed that seven out of ten of the world's top business executives are against further consolidation of the Big Six accounting firms. Some 69 per cent of the executives surveyed by Research International were opposed, with four out of 10 strongly opposed.
Some 623 chief executives and senior financial officers of multinational companies and large national companies in 11 countries were surveyed. Eleven of those surveyed expressed strong support for the mergers among the Big Six firms.
Reasons given for opposition to the mergers include the removal of choice for clients and conflicts of interest. European executives were more opposed to consolidation than US executives - 73 per cent versus 58 per cent.
