Private equity player Pemba targets accounting market

Private equity firm, Pemba Capital Partners has taken a pivotal stake in Melbourne-based accounting business, Stannards.

The Pemba investment in Stannards represents yet another private equity involvement in the financial advice and accounting arenas.

Pemba told investors that it had been tracking the accounting sector several years and had spoken to over a hundred firms, as well as industry experts in Australia and overseas.

It described the Australian accounting market as highly fragmented with fewer than 36,000 firms with the mid-market firms growing at around 10% to 11%.

“Pemba like the sector due to the mission-critical nature of the work, combined with the opportunity to ‘value add’ services,” the company said.

“Pemba sees multiple growth avenues including the use of new technologies and potential acquisitions and partnerships,” it said.

Pemba said it would work closely with the Stannards and that, together, they had already identified a range of organic initiatives to “deepen relationships with existing clients and enhance service lines”.

“Give the highly fragment market, the partnership will also work collaboratively to assess potential acquisition opportunities,” it said.

Stannards is a well-established accounting firm based in South Yarra comprised of nine directors and 80 staff and servicing all states.

Pemba noted that it had also invested around the accounting sector, including SuperConcepts (SMSF administration) and Acis (company registration software), used by many of the nation’s accounting firms.