Change doesn’t come quickly to the accounting profession. Rule modifications are proposed, debated and implemented over a period of years.

It’s dominated by a Big Four that’s remained the same since the Enron debacle led to the demise of Arthur Andersen L.L.P. in 2002.

But below the top tier are some regional firms that are involved in so many deals, they could give a few of their clients a run for their money.

Locally, our accounting rocket is Parente Randolph L.L.C., based on the 44th and 45th floors of One Liberty Place. The firm absorbed three accounting firms in early 2009.

Yesterday, Parente Randolph announced its biggest deal yet: a “merger of equals” with Beard Miller Co. L.L.P., of Reading. Looking at the scale of each accounting and consulting firm, that seems an apt description of the transaction.

Parente Randolph has 87 principals and more than 600 total employees in 14 offices. Beard Miller has 85 partners and more than 550 employees in 13 offices.

The two appear one after the other on the 2009 Accounting Today Top 100 Firms list: Beard Miller was No. 35 with net revenues of $75.2 million for 2008, while Parente Randolph was No. 36 with $74.3 million.

Put them together and the as-yet unnamed new firm would have ranked No. 21 on that list, ahead of the firm that has been the Philadelphia area’s biggest for years, Smart Business Advisory & Consulting L.L.C., based in Devon.

Parente Randolph chairman and CEO Robert J. Ciaruffoli, who will be the chief executive of the combined company, said each firm brings its own strengths. Beard Miller has sizable practices in public utilities, insurance and financial institutions. Parente Randolph has deep experience with higher-education and health-care institutions.

There’s not much overlap, although each organization has offices in Pittsburgh and the Lehigh Valley. They’ll look to combine them, he said. Philadelphia will be the headquarters of the combined Parente/Beard.

Discussions that led to the merger began in early December, Ciaruffoli said. He and Beard Miller chairman and CEO Lamar Stoltzfus compared notes on strategic plans that were practically mirror images. (Stoltzfus will become chairman of the new entity.)

In a deal like this, no money changes hands. Rather, the partners of each firm get new shares of the new firm. Beard Miller partners unanimously approved the transaction June 30, while the principals of Ciaruffoli’s firm did so July 18. The deal is expected to close in the middle of the fourth quarter.

“We want to be the dominant firm from New York City to Washington, D.C.,” Ciaruffoli said.

With annual revenue of $175 million and more than 1,200 employees, this new mid-tier firm will be a few steps closer to that goal.

Two Philadelphia-area regional accounting and consulting firms today said they will merge, creating one with $175 million in annual revenue.

Parente Randolph L.L.C. and Beard Miller Co. L.L.P. said they intend to combine their operations during the fourth quarter. The headquarters of the firm, which will take on a new name, will be in Philadelphia.

The two are similar in size. Center City-based Parente Randolph has 87 principals and more than 600 total employees in 14 offices. Reading-based Beard Miller has 85 partners and more than 550 employees in 13 offices.

Parente Randolph chairman and CEO Bob Ciaruffoli would become CEO of the combined enterprise. Beard Miller chairman and CEO Lamar Stoltzfus would become chairman.

In a statement this morning, Ciaruffoli said the deal would enable the firm to bring a "broader array of industry expertise" to clients.

Stoltzfus cited "more industry-specific expertise, specialized tax consulting, and other business advisory resources" as reasons to combine.

Parente Randolph has grown by executing a series of mergers in recent years. It added its first New York-area offices in February when it bought Lazar Levine & Felix L.L.P., adding 85 people.

In January, Parente Randolph absorbed Altenburger, Uris, Caglioti & Heyman, of Cherry Hill, and William R. Hoffman Ltd., of Williamsport.

When big commercial leases get close to expiring, the negotiations to entice an employer across town, the city line or the river can gain a public profile.

That happened in 2003, when Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby Inc. was looking to relocate its pension and health and welfare administration services operation in Voorhees.

The bistate jockeying ended with the privately held firm picking Cherry Hill, keeping 1,100 jobs in South Jersey. Towers Perrin moved into a renovated steel factory, taking 200,000 square feet of office space.

So I was curious what happened to that operation following the news last week that Stamford, Conn.-based Towers Perrin would be merging with Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. in a transaction worth about $3.5 billion. After all, Towers Perrin said its Center City office was its biggest with 1,016 employees.

What happened to the Cherry Hill operation is that Towers Perrin had sold its last remaining interest in the business about a month ago, said spokesman Joe Conway.

Less than six months after making that move from Voorhees, Towers Perrin agreed to sell 85 percent of its interest in its human- resources outsourcing business to Electronic Data Systems Inc. That deal, under which EDS paid $420 million, closed in March 2005, and the business was renamed ExcellerateHRO.

In May, Towers Perrin sold its remaining stake to EDS, now a unit of Hewlett-Packard Co. Terms for that deal were not released.

A Hewlett-Packard spokeswoman would not disclose how many people ExcellerateHRO employs in Cherry Hill, saying it was company policy not to provide employment numbers by business unit or location.

Heading to work

Despite a bad job market, there’s always room for interns, right?

About 1,000 Philadelphia students will start their six-week paid internships at 120 local employers today. It’s the third year for the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce’s involvement in a program managed by the Philadelphia Youth Network.

Employers either contributed positions in their workplaces or funding for positions at nonprofits.

The recession has meant fewer internships this summer than last, when 1,500 students participated.

Put two big pharmaceutical companies together and people notice, but two large benefits consulting firms …?

Well, I only noticed this billion-dollar deal because one of the consulting firms is Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby Inc., which was founded in Philadelphia in 1934.

Now based in Stamford, Conn., Towers Perrin is one of those “quiet giants” in Philadelphia business circles. It’s been a major tenant in the Centre Square office building at 1500 Market St. since 1975. And that office remains its biggest, employing 1,016 people, or 16 percent of its total workforce.

Towers Perrin is quiet, for one thing, because it’s a private company. But while Philadelphians frequent the convenience stores of the privately held Wawa and the concession stands at arenas run by privately owned Aramark, they are largely unaware of how Towers Perrin may intersect their lives.

Towers Perrin’s game is providing management consulting services, which means it employs lots of actuaries, risk managers, and employee benefits and insurance professionals.

On Sunday, Towers Perrin agreed to merge with the publicly held Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. in a transaction valued at about $3.5 billion. The resulting organization will be called Towers Watson & Co. and have annual revenues of more than $3 billion.

Watson Wyatt, of Arlington, Va., is the bigger firm with 7,700 employees worldwide, including offices in Berwyn and Philadelphia.

Where’s the exit?

James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, will speak in Philadelphia Tuesday about the central bank’s “exit strategies” from the emergency lending programs that have helped rescue the U.S. economy.

It should be a timely lecture, coming soon after Bullard’s counterpart at the Dallas Fed told Bloomberg News on Friday that such strategies are “not ready to be articulated” until the “appropriate time.”

Let’s hope today’s more appropriate.

It’s moving day for Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney P.C.

The law firm is closed today so that all those leather-bound law books can be lugged from the 14th floor of 1835 Market St. to Two Liberty Place, 50 S. 16th St., a few blocks away.

On Monday morning, Buchanan Ingersoll lawyers and staff will have a new view of the world from their offices on the 31st, 32nd and 33rd floors. The firm signed a 12-year lease for 77,018 square feet in blue-glass office tower in January 2008.

Based in Pittsburgh, the law firm has 70 lawyers and government-relations professionals as well as 58 additional staff members in its Philadelphia office.
 

The employment news is nothing but bad today, and the economists keep telling us that the job market is going to get worse.

One thing that readers keep asking for are solutions or strategies for dealing with the lousy job market. So I'm going to try to post as many events as I hear about that try to bring job seekers and employers looking to hire together.

Pink Slip Parties have been around for awhile. They popped up earlier in the decade, especially after the dot-com bust, as a way for the newly laid off to gather and commiserate. They returned in New York last fall as Wall Street began emptying out.

Now Philadelphia will see a Pink Slip Party at Public House, 2 Logan Square, March 11 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. For other details, here's the link to the news release.

Sponsored by Ajilon Professional Staffing, the event is geared toward those in finance, accounting, legal and information technology fields. (Ajilon is a unit of Adecco Group, the huge personnel and temporary employment firm based in Switzerland.)

Ajilon says there are job openings at "major" companies in the Philadelphia area.

UPDATE: Here are some of the companies confirmed for the event: Comcast, the Hub Meeting & Events Center (in the Cira Centre building), SEPTA, and IKO, of Wilmington.

All Pink Slip Parties are fund-raisers. So Ajilon is asking for a $15 donation at the door. All the money raised will go to the Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House.

On the day new statistics were released that showed the number of business bankruptcies rose 54 percent in 2008, the “B” word was being floated again for General Motors Corp.

This time, it was GM’s independent auditors questioning the automaker’s ability to continue as a “going concern” in a note included in its latest annual report. (GM's response is here.)

Is anyone surprised by this? Since Christmas, debate has raged over the merits of the federal rescue of GM and Chrysler L.L.C. versus the automakers using bankruptcy to reorganize their finances.

Deloitte & Touche L.L.P. did not use the word “bankruptcy.” “Going concern” notes are dull reading. There’s no gotcha, like “the brand’s image never recovered following Michael Moore’s 1989 political satire Roger & Me.”

Rather the auditors cite GM’s “recurring losses from operations, stockholders’ deficit, and inability to generate sufficient cash flow to meet its obligations and sustain its operations.”

Tell us something we don’t already know. But Deloitte’s “going concern” note would have been revolutionary earlier in this decade as Enron, WorldCom and other companies imploded in a string of accounting scandals.

Weiss Ratings Inc. reviewed the paper trail of 307 public companies that filed for Chapter 11 between Jan. 1, 2001, and June 30, 2002. Of those, 228 received an auditor’s report within 366 days of going bankrupt.

Here’s the kicker: Auditing firms gave a “clean bill of health” to 42 percent of the firms that eventually went bankrupt, Weiss Ratings said.

Let’s call it progress that Deloitte sounded the alarm about its “substantial doubt.” Should GM file for Chapter 11, it would have lots of company.

Yesterday, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said there were 43,546 business-related bankruptcy filings nationwide in 2008, up from 28,322 in 2007. That’s bad, but not as bad as it was nearly 20 years ago when business bankruptcies peaked at 71,549 in 1991.

As we near a decision by Pennsylvania’s Insurance Commissioner on the possible merger of the state’s two biggest insurers, one opponent is reminding us why it thinks the deal should be stopped.

On Friday, the Center for American Progress published a memo that says the merger of Pittsburgh-based Highmark Inc. and Philadelphia’s Independence Blue Cross would damage the Pennsylvania economy and harm the state’s position for health-care reform.

You can read the memo titled “A Perfect Storm” (where have I heard that before?) on the think tank’s Web site. It echoes its previous testimony at a couple of hearings that have been held on the mega-merger.

Some of the prose doesn’t really rally me to its cause, such as “Pennsylvania, like practically every other state, has suffered substantial job losses since the Insurance Department’s hearings were held.”

Those hearings were last summer, and the job market has gotten worse since then. But Pennsylvania’s November unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was below the national rate of 6.8 percent. In fact, the Rendell administration boasted that the 0.7 percent decline in Pennsylvania’s job total since November 2007 was roughly half the drop seen nationally. When you’re a no-growth state, you get to stand tall as the hot spots fall.

And, “The merger would put Pennsylvania at a competitive disadvantage as the economy worsens.” Get in line; Pennsylvania already has a lot of competitive disadvantages. It’s why many manufacturers fled long ago and why the state rarely cracks the top 10 on lists of the Most Wonderful States to Do Business. Even without a massive merger, we’re behind the 8-ball.

Finally, is the Center for American Progress trying to get on Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario’s good side with a comment such as:

“Yet if the past several months have taught us anything, it is that regulators are imperfect, often deceived and have tremendously limited resources.”

Why not just say: Commissioner, imperfect as you are, those thousands of pages of documentation and days of testimony may have deceived you and taxed your limited resources. Or suggest that he get a good night’s sleep and eat a hearty breakfast before he pens his decision on whether Highmark should be allowed to merge with Independence Blue Cross.

Having seen Ario in action running a couple of hearings, I have a lot of faith that he has the chops to evaluate what’s best for Pennsylvania’s health-insurance market. The experts the Insurance Department hired have counseled against this further concentration in market power. The testimony at the various hearings suggests 2-to-1 opposition or more to the creation of IndyMark.

I can’t wait to read what’s likely to be a phonebook-sized report denying these nonprofit organizations’ plan to build an insurance colossus. It’ll focus on competition and in particular the lack of desire by Highmark and Independence to invade each other’s markets. Will Ario force them to sell their products statewide? Or direct their sales forces to slug it out in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia? Or prevent them from straying outside their current territories?

It’s going to be fascinating reading, and the report could be issued next week. But while the Center for American Progress cautions against creating a health insurer that’s too big to fail, I’ll worry what Plan B is for Independence Blue Cross should it be left at the altar. Does it pursue a new partner? Does it try to convert to a for-profit, like Horizon is trying to do in New Jersey?

I no longer fear creating something too big to fail. In case you didn’t notice, the United States is in the bailout business now. First, investment banks and traditional banks. Then, automakers and life insurers.

I’m sure the Treasury Department would happily take on an unhealthy health insurer or two.

Earnings

Today: Companyname; <NO>Tuesday: Fulton Financial; Wednesday: Air Products & Chemicals; Thursday: AmerisourceBergen, Exelon, J&J Snack Foods, National Penn Bancshares, Sun Bancorp, Technitrol, Vist Financial, WSFS Financial; Friday: CSS Industries, Harleysville National, Harleysville Savings, Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Sunoco Logistics Partners, Univest Corp. of Pennsylvania.

As we get closer to a decision by Pennsylvania's Insurance Commissioner on the possible merger of the state's two biggest insurers, some opponents are reminding everyone why they think it should be stopped.

Today, the Center for American Progress published a memo that says the merger between Pittsburgh-based Highmark Inc. and Philadelphia's Independence Blue Cross will damage the Pennsylvania economy and harm the state's position for health-care reform.

You can read the memo with the cliched title of "A Perfect Storm" (where have I heard that before?) on the think tank's Web site. It echoes its previous testimony at a couple of hearings that have been held on the mega-merger.

Let me warn you: Some of the prose reads almost like repurposed boilerplate, such as "Pennsylvania, like practically every other state, has suffered substantial job losses since the Insurance Department's hearings were held."

Well, those hearings were last summer. And Pennsylvania's November unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was below the national rate of 6.8 percent. In fact, the Rendell administration boasted that the 0.7 percent decline in Pennsylvania's job total since November 2007 was roughly half the drop seen nationally. When you're a no-growth state, you get to stand tall as the hot spots fall.

Expect more position papers from all sides as we await Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario's official declaration. At this point, I don't know that there's anything new that can be said either by the opponents or proponents. What matters is the final decision and that is a report I can't wait to read.