Mazars has just announced mergers with the German firm Hemmelerath and the English firm Moores Rowland LLP. Its international presence will also be strengthened through the Praxity alliance.

Patrick de Cambourg, Chairman of the Mazars group
“Mazars will now take its place in the top ten British audit and consulting firms.”

A pan-European audit entity with a global presence? Such is the ambition of Patrick de Cambourg, Chairman of the Mazars group. And he has been building it up, brick by brick, for more than ten years. In the last few days, the firm has achieved two major new successes in the development of this entity. Beginning in Europe, the organisation, which has had a presence in Germany since the late 1970s, announced its merger with Hemmelerath on the 11th April. “For us it’s an opportunity to figure among the top ten German firms, whilst also strengthening our presence in the regions,” Patrick de Cambourg explains proudly. The firm will henceforth have offices in all major German towns and a staff of 400 professionals. Since German organisations tend to be oriented towards Eastern Europe, this merger will also provide Mazars with an opening to broaden its presence in the Czech Republic (200 personnel), Poland (130 personnel) and Romania (65 professionals). On the same day, Mazars announced another merger, this time in Great Britain, with the London firm Moores Rowland LLP, which will increase its workforce on the other side of the Channel to 1,200 by the end of the year, with an estimated turnover of €133 million. “We were already established in the United Kingdom; this operation strengthens our presence in London and on the mid-cap market in particular. Mazars will now take its place in the top ten British audit and consulting firms,” emphasises Patrick de Cambourg. But that is not all. Keen to develop its international presence, on the 17th April the firm also announced the launch of Praxity. The objective of this alliance, founded by Mazars and a number of firms within the Moores Rowland International network, is to bring together established firms all around the world which share the same commitment and quality standards. It is already established in 65 countries and has a turnover of €2 billion.

So Mazars is forging ahead with its foreign expansion operations whilst still remaining true to its integrated company strategy. This is a distinctive approach in the world of auditing; the big global networks, such as the Big Four, consist of a group of connected firms which are separate legal entities. But Patrick de Cambourg has always distanced himself from these models, favouring instead an integrated architecture which is able, as is absolutely essential for a European structure, to develop within federalising economies. Domestic partnerships are therefore “topped off” with a “holding” partnership in the form of a limited cooperative company based in Brussels. On the 31st August 2006, at the closing of the network’s accounts, Mazars had 5,640 people based in 40 countries, for a turnover of €550 million. Since then, it has expanded into India (270 people), Egypt (400 people), Venezuela and Brazil. Added to that are the two recent deals in Germany and the United Kingdom, which means the integrated Mazars organisation will now consist of 7,500 people worldwide. Clearly, that is a modest number compared to PwC’s 140,000 people, but the four big networks in the world of auditing have all been in existence for a century, whereas Mazars was founded after the war, but did not really embark on an international growth strategy until 1995. And although integration is at the heart of this firm’s strategy, there are nonetheless 23,000 people connected to it through the Praxity alliance. And that is not all. Other projects will shortly be announced in Asia Pacific and in Africa. “We have a double objective: on the one hand, stimulating organic growth with the emphasis on technical quality, and on the other hand, increasing our geographical coverage according to requirements and opportunities. And bear in mind that each foreign growth project requires six months to a year of work in order to ensure we share the same values,” the Chairman explains. For years, the profession in France has been sceptical of Mazars’s ambitions, refusing to believe in the possibility of creating a credible European audit entity when faced with the big global networks… It seems that Patrick de Cambourg is well on his way to proving them wrong…

Olivia Dufour

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