3 Thoughts
1 I don't know if a book will be written, but the troubles of Vantis, Target and now Tenon may be worth following because of the difficulty of changing the basic structure of professional service firms. The pricing of acquisitions is clearly not at all straightforward and divorcing senior service providers (partners to you and me) from ownership and management would also seem to be a difficult trick to play.
2 On a slightly different tack - the Warren Buffett biography The Snowball by Alice Schroeder gives a refreshing insight into how understanding the numbers can be really rather helpful if you want to amass a rather large fortune. It won't tell you how to run an accounting practice, but it will make you realise that perhaps preparing all those accounts may be a worthwhile occupation after all
3 Back in 1992 Chris Swinson wrote a book published by Accountancy Books called "Delivering a Quality Service" which might give a historical perspective.
Books about the consolidators
1 I don't know if a book will be written, but the troubles of Vantis, Target and now Tenon may be worth following because of the difficulty of changing the basic structure of professional service firms. The pricing of acquisitions is clearly not at all straightforward and divorcing senior service providers (partners to you and me) from ownership and management would also seem to be a difficult trick to play...
This book already has been written and is avaliable from the best accountancy practice M&A specialist I know - Mr Julian Hamilton of Jobtel.
See here: http://www.jobtelmanda.co.uk/mabooks.html
Steve
A good read for the proactive accountant 1 thanks
Adrian, I can recommend another great read – Absolute Certainty by the well-respected NZ author John Haylock. An easy and engaging read that in my travels and discussions with accountants here in the UK, is surprisingly widely discovered and appreciated. Haylock’s book is interesting on a couple of fronts. Firstly his ability to raise the challenge of value pricing and his simple but powerful approach to workflow management. Also the fact that he’s lived the life means his advice is trusted and proven. I believe there is a Kindle version available on Amazon as well as paperback available direct from the author.