The Marcum Retrospective – Part 5

When they say it takes a village, it’s not a cliché. Building Marcum into the business it is today took not only a village but a city and state as well, people both inside and outside the company. Today, it’s time to thank many of those on the outside.

Unless you’ve run and built a business, you can’t possibly appreciate the army of people you need to help you grow and manage it: bankers, lawyers, insurance brokers, accountants, and consultants. The list goes on and on. There have been so many along the way, without whose help we never could have accomplished what we did at Marcum. Today, I will attempt to thank them—in no particular order. And if I missed someone along the way, my sincerest apologies. There’s been 43 years of them to remember.

THE BANKERS

I met Bob Ehrlich of Franklin National Bank on Long Island in 1985 at a mutual client’s office, Graphic Image (still a client today). Bob and Franklin National started a relationship with Marcum & Kliegman that still exists. Franklin National became European American Bank, and then, at some point, the team handling the Marcum account, which grew to include Jane Duggan, moved to Citibank. When Commerce Bank opened on Long Island with Chris Giamo at the helm, Jane, Bob, and the team moved to Commerce, which TD Bank later acquired. TD remains Marcum’s lead bank today. Bob & Jane have since retired, and Chris remains at the head of TD’s NY commercial bank. Without the long-term banking relationship we fostered with Bob, Jane, Chris & the entire TD team, we would NEVER have been able to execute the growth plan we embarked on in 2008.

THE LAWYERS

If you had told a young Jeff Weiner how many different law firms we’d be dealing with at the same time, I would have told you that you were crazy. It takes fingers and toes to count them all.

Our first outside lawyer, who still does work for us today, was Long Island based Drew Presberg. Our relationship with Drew goes back to the late 80s, when his service and counsel were essential, especially in those early years.

As we grew in revenue, people, locations, and services, our legal needs and representation became more complicated and specialized. Some of the key legal advisors and their teams who worked with us and helped us tremendously along the way include:

• John LaRocca at Dechert (CBIZ sale counsel)
• Andrew Ceresney at Debevoise & Plimpton (SEC counsel)
• Claudius Modesti at Akin (PCAOB counsel)
• Bruce Braun at Sidley Austin (professional liability counsel)
• Mark Seelig at Meister Seelig & Fein (real estate)
• Steve Mintz at Mintz & Gold (everything an outside general counsel should do).

INSURANCE BROKERS

Every business needs insurance: property, cyber, business interruption, health, life, and so on. Fortunately, we have very long-term relationships here as well:

• Doug Schenendorf of HUB International has been Marcum’s go-to P&C insurance broker since 1990.
• Larry Levine of LTL Insurance Concepts has provided us with life insurance on our partners for equally as long, if not longer.
• Ken Gross of Risk Strategies, in conjunction with Ken Mackunis and Ken Kumar of AON, have been Marcum’s professional liability brokers for as long as I can remember.

THE CONSULTANTS

No matter what you think know about your own business, it’s always a good idea to get an outsider’s perspective, especially one who understands your industry and individual business dynamics. Accountants, who typically give their clients advice, need outside advice as well. Our first outside advisor was accounting profession pioneer Don Istvan. After Don, two of our profession’s leading consultants helped us tremendously along the way, Jay Nisberg and Allan Koltin. Without Jay’s & Allan’s personal counsel and friendship along the way, none of what we accomplished would have been possible.

INVESTMENT BANKERS

On September 8, 2021, I received an unsolicited email from Michael Henry at Deutsche Bank explaining that his team had worked on my friend Charly Weinstein of EisnerAmper’s private equity transaction and asking if Marcum had any interest in a conversation. As I’ve done for the past 28 years, every time we had a major decision to make, I walked into our Vice Chairman David Bukzin’s office to see what his thoughts were. We decided it was worth a response. And as they say, the rest is history. Michael, his partner Bob Kitts, and their extraordinary team, including Sam Ross, Jenna Gammer, and Andrew Mo, have worked tirelessly for the last three years and guided us to the CBIZ transaction.

There are armies of others, from Marc Spector of Spector Companies (our architects) and Meredith Waldner Stern (our office furniture) to Jackson Lewis (our labor and employment counsel) and many others too numerous to mention. If you helped us along the way and I neglected to give you an individual shout-out, my apologies, but it certainly took a village to help us go from six people in a single office on Long Island to over 4,000 today in over 40 domestic offices.

To all of you who help, our sincerest thanks.

Tonight at sundown starts Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year for Jews. For those of you who observe, have an easy fast.