Whitley Penn and Elliott Davis have called off the wedding.
The planned merger between the Fort Worth and South Carolina accounting firms was planned to close Nov. 1.
However, leaders from both firms concluded they were a cultural mismatch, according to a story in Inside Public Accounting.
“We just decided that rather than force two cultures together we could thrive separately,” said Larry Autrey, managing partner at Whitley Penn, in an interview with IPA. “We’re both good at what we do. We’re high-performing firms and will continue to be.”
Whitley Penn is ranked at No. 37 on the latest IPA 100 list of largest firms in the nation, while the Greenville, South Carolina-based Elliott Davis is No. 40.
The merged firm was to have been named Elliott Penn. It would have been a top-25 firm with 16 offices and 1,400 professionals. Autrey and Elliott Davis CEO Rick Davis were to serve as co-CEOs.
In addition to its headquarters in Fort Worth, Whitley Penn has offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Plano, San Antonio, Midland and Odessa, and Hobbs, New Mexico.
“We learned a ton about ourselves in the process,” Autrey told IPA. “We both thought we had good teams, but you never know until you see them perform at such a high level.”
“These two firms dared to try something very different and in the end figured out it wasn’t their best option,” said consultant Allan Koltin, who spoke to IPA. “Interestingly, this goes on every single day in the ‘real’ business world. Sometimes a merger/combination happens and sometimes it doesn’t. Candidly, I wish more firms had the guts to take more risks like this and explore new visions and opportunities for their firms.”