Ascend Completes Largest Merger to Date—Regional Leader KSDT Joins the Platform
September 2, 2025 (Arlington, VA) – Ascend, a strategic partner for regional accounting and advisory firms backed by private equity firm Alpine Investors, today announced its largest merger transaction to date, adding Miami-based KSDT.
One of Accounting Today’s 2025 Firms to Watch and a Top Firm in the Gulf Coast region, KSDT adds five offices, 29 partners, and 276 total professionals to Ascend’s southeastern footprint. In addition, KSDT’s India team will integrate into Ascend’s offshore captive, Sentient Solutions for Accounting (“Sentient”), a global accounting services and technology solutions leader based in Hyderabad.
The deal was effective as of September 1.
"Ascend is the partner we’ve been waiting for, one that matches our ambition without asking us to be anyone but ourselves. We built KSDT on a simple idea: take extraordinary care of people and the growth will follow. This merger lets us do that at a bigger scale and a faster pace with more opportunity for our team, more capability for our clients, and more room to build the kind of firm our industry needs. We’re keeping our culture, our personality, and our entrepreneurial spirit, and adding the technology, resources, and national reach to accelerate everything that makes KSDT special. This is about honoring the legacy we’ve built and multiplying it. Our best work and our biggest impact starts now," said Jeffrey Taraboulos, KSDT’s CEO.
Founded in 1976, KSDT is a people-first firm dedicated to helping business owners achieve their financial goals, freeing them to focus on running their business, serving their clients, and helping their employees live better. Among the firm’s many industry honors, most recently KSDT was named a Top 200 Firm by Inside Public Accounting and a “Best Place to Work 2025” by the South Florida Business Journal.
“Of the more than 40,000 public accounting firms in the United States, fewer than a handful have climbed into the profession’s Top 200 in a single generation. KSDT is among that small group, and it is clear to us what makes the firm exceptional -- leadership that sets a high bar and connects work to purpose, a culture that aspires to be the best workplace for the best people, and a vibrant middle-market in South Florida that has taken to the firm’s fiercely independent roots and personal, context-rich service. These are special qualities, and we are building Ascend so that the team at KSDT can compound their unique momentum for generations,” Nishaad (“Nish”) Ruparel, Ascend’s President, said.
The Ascend platform enables top regional accounting firms with between $15 and $50 million in revenue, committed leadership, great cultures, and a big vision for the future to remain independent while accessing the sophisticated resources of a large firm to reach their full potential.
The appeal of the platform as a solution to the challenges of the traditional partnership structure has rapidly driven Ascend into the upper tier of the accounting profession, establishing it as an Accounting Today Top 30 firm and David Wurtzbacher, the firm’s Founder and CEO, as a two-time “Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting” in just over two years.
“It’s an honor to have a firm of KSDT’s caliber join and strengthen Ascend. Their entrepreneurial, service-oriented spirit, which has led to their success in one of the most significant markets in the U.S., is a perfect fit for the Ascend model. We amplify what is special about the strong, regional, independent firm with the resources, technology and collaboration of a top 25 firm,” said Wurtzbacher.
As is common in private equity deals with CPA firms, KSDT has adopted an alternative practice structure separating non-attest and attest services. Tax and business advisory services are provided by a new entity affiliated with Ascend. Attest services are provided by an independently owned and licensed CPA firm.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
About Ascend
Backed by private equity from people-focused Alpine Investors, Ascend is building a dynamic platform for regional accounting firms that enables them to stay independent while accessing the resources of a national firm to help them grow. Ascend provides access to growth capital, robust talent acquisition and training, leading quality management resources, best-of-breed technology, AI tools, an offshore captive, shared back-office services, a catalytic leadership system, and modernized equity incentives so that firms can surmount today’s industry challenges to reach their full potential. For more information, visit www.ascendtogether.com.