In the spring, Second Six accounting firm Grant Thornton sold a majority stake in itself to a private equity firm. Six months later, that firm, New Mountain Capital, is doing what p.e. shops do.
The firm this week notified the employees, or 1.5% of its roughly 9,700-person U.S. workforce, in cuts spanning the advisory, tax and audit businesses…. The cuts are primarily focused on “meeting market demand and reallocating capacity from where growth has slowed to areas where growth is accelerating,” [national managing principal for U.S. tax services Mark] Margulies said in the memo.
Yes, we’re sure it’s the demands of the “market” they are trying to meet, just like its peers were trying to do for the healthcare industry, where people were simply clamoring for higher prices, more hospital infections and falls, more medication errors, bleary-eyed caretakers and more preventable deaths. I mean, really, how much do companies want to avoid an accounting scandal, really?
Anyway, good luck to the soon-to-be-unemployed Grant Thorntonites over in merry Olde England.
Earlier this week, another private-equity firm, Cinven, agreed to make a majority investment in Grant Thornton’s U.K. unit.
Grant Thornton Lays Off U.S. Workers in First Cuts Since Private-Equity Sale [WSJ]
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