Thought Leadership

You already have what it takes

Investment banks win mandates on trust and relationships. So do accountants, and often more deeply. For owner-managed businesses, their accountant is frequently the first call when something significant is about to happen: a retirement, a restructure, a sale. Many firms handle that conversation well, then refer the transaction work elsewhere. The opportunity being missed is substantial.

Firms that have made the move into advisory tend to say the same thing: the barriers were lower than expected. What held them back wasn't capability. It was not seeing what they already had.

Building from strength: Hall Chadwick's story

Hall Chadwick's expansion into corporate finance and investment banking is a useful case study, precisely because it didn't begin with a grand strategy. It began with a gap.

The firm's restructuring and insolvency division is one of the top five in Australia. It was regularly working with distressed and transitioning businesses, and as Craig Nettleback explained in the webinar, 'we were lacking some skills on the sell side of some of these assets.' Rather than referring that work out, Hall Chadwick built the capability in-house, bringing in industry executives with deal experience to sit alongside the existing restructuring team.

From there, the firm looked at where it had a genuine structural advantage. Hall Chadwick audits approximately 15% of resource companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). That's a level of sector intelligence no new entrant could quickly replicate, and it became the foundation for the corporate finance practice.

The firm then identified a market theme worth orienting around. Growing US appetite for Australian critical minerals and rare earths, driven by supply chain concerns and significant government-backed capital, represented a multi-decade structural shift. Hall Chadwick moved toward it early: building relationships in Washington DC, partnering with US capital markets firm Cohen & Co., and launching a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) listed on the Nasdaq. Their first vehicle raised $207 million and was five times oversubscribed.

The deal flow that's already there

For most mid-tier accounting firms, the M&A pipeline isn't hard to find. Mark Bailey set out two structural dynamics in the Australian market that will be familiar in many other jurisdictions.

More than 40% of Australian SMEs are owned by people aged 55 or over. That demographic reality is generating a steady pipeline of quality businesses coming to market, not through distress, but through owners who are simply ready to move on. Accountants are almost always the first professional these owners speak to.

At the same time, there is substantial appetite from foreign buyers, particularly from North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. And those buyers regularly encounter structures they don't understand: trust-based business ownership common in the Australian mid-market, earnout arrangements, franking credits complicating dividend flows, and transfer pricing under scrutiny from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). An accountant who already knows the client's structure and tax history is better placed to guide a transaction than any external advisor who has to learn it from scratch.

Three starting points for firms considering this move

Hall Chadwick's experience points to a few principles worth taking seriously.

Go deep in one sector before going broad. The credible starting point isn't a general M&A capability offer. It's identifying a sector where the firm already has significant audit and advisory relationships, and building from there. Clients trust advisors who understand their industry, not just their numbers.

Treat your PrimeGlobal membership as deal infrastructure. The association's global reach is an asset that most firms use for compliance and technical knowledge sharing. It can just as easily be used for deal origination and referral.

Orient the practice around a market theme. The firms gaining traction in advisory aren't waiting for deals to come to them. They have a point of view on where deal activity is heading, whether that's energy transition, digital assets, infrastructure, or business succession, and they're visible in those conversations before transactions crystallize.

The firms moving now

The boundary between accounting and advisory has been shifting for years. What's different now is the volume of opportunity: cross-border deal activity, a generational transfer of business ownership, and sector-specific capital flows are all running at once. Mid-tier accounting firms are naturally positioned to benefit from this, but only if they're willing to act on the relationships they already have.

Hall Chadwick started by filling a gap in their own work. Most firms will find, if they look, that the same gap is already there.