Noyes launches buying spree for accounting and tax firms

Noyes, a 110-year-old wealth management and investment banking firm, intends to acquire more accounting and tax firms after buying Kiely & Associates, a tax and accounting practice, last month.

The addition of Kiely & Associates will provide family office, tax and business services to Noyes’ wealth management and financial management clients. The family office services represent an expansion of Noyes’ core advisory business.

“We’re a wealth management firm by trade,” Noyes COO Matthew Reynolds says. “We bought the Kiely & Associates practice for two reasons. One is to help build out and launch our family office practice. The second was, a number of the services that Kiely & Associates provides — tax prep, bill pay, basic accounting for entities and for entrepreneurs — are areas that we look at as a value-add to our larger wealth management clients.”

Tax 1040 form by Bloomberg News

Now, he says, Noyes is looking to further expand through more acquisitions. “What we would like to do is simply take an approach where we are gathering and providing a capability for those other accounting firms to have a succession plan, but also for us to go ahead and scale that business as well.”

Noyes, founded in 1908, is one of the oldest securities firms in Chicago and has been in the Indianapolis area for nearly 85 years. The employee-owned firm has 11 offices in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. Reynolds plans to expand Noyes into other parts of the country as well.

“We have expanded our independent capabilities, so now having a national presence is not very difficult,” he says. “Our goal would be to have an accounting practice or team in each one of our largest segment areas.”

Noyes is currently looking to add another accounting practice in the Indianapolis-Carmel region in Indiana, Reynolds says. A number of larger independent advisory practices have already come to the firm about hiring tax professionals into their office, he added.

He expects the far-reaching changes in the new tax law will increase demand for tax-planning opportunities among wealth management clients.

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The Minnesota Society of CPAs recently conducted its annual CPA member survey about the most strange and unusual tax deductions proposed by clients. The responses included everything from pets and wedding rings to gifts not given.

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“When we were looking at different accounting practices to acquire, part of it is the relationship that tax provider has with their clients,” Reynolds says. “What we have found is that when there is a trusted advisor type of relationship between the tax professional and the clients, that just goes really well with the rest of the services that we provide.”

Kiely & Associates, based in Chicago, provides tax advice to more than 1,000 clients. Noyes as an investment advisor and broker-dealer provides wealth management services to roughly $4.2 billion in assets under management.

Last month, the firm was talking to three other practices about potential mergers. “We’re targeting not only a handful of practices today, but we’re also actively talking to a number of different accounting partners at different locations, people in our network that we know, we trust, and we feel will be good to add to our presence,” Reynolds says.

This article originally appeared in Accounting Today.
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