Laventhol’s Clients Weigh Their Options : Accounting: After the firm’s planned bankruptcy and dissolution, the local office will stay alive as an independent. Some customers will remain with it, but others are shopping.

COSTA MESA —  In reaction to Laventhol & Horwath’s planned bankruptcy and dissolution, some of the firm’s Orange County clients are considering transferring their business to other accounting firms.

Richard Carpe, managing partner of Laventhol’s Costa Mesa office, said the local office will stay alive as an independent accounting firm to be called Carpe, Wachs, Kipper & Davis. He said the firm hopes to retain many of its clients.

But some clients and competing firms said Tuesday that many Laventhol clients are already looking for a new auditor.

Ronald L. Budman, chief financial officer for Children’s Hospital of Orange County, is considering transferring the hospital’s business to another national firm. He said a nonprofit organization often has to rely on the credibility it gets with prospective lenders from having an audit performed by a national firm.

Carpe, who will be chief executive of the new local accounting firm, performed the hospital’s audit this year. But Budman noted that the loss of the Laventhol name could be damaging.

“If we wanted to go out and borrow money, a Laventhol audit report would be viewed differently than a Richard Carpe audited report,” he said.

Another client, however, said he would stick with the new firm. Stephen Bone, executive director of the Robert L. Mayer Corp., a Newport Beach-based developer, said he will stick with the local successor of Laventhol because his accountant, Rich Kipper, is staying put.

Still, local managing partners of competing major accounting concerns said they have been getting calls from Laventhol clients concerned that they may need an accountant with national stature either to satisfy their lenders or to handle geographically scattered operations.

Many of the clients have said they are under pressure to decide soon whether to change accounting firms because they are entering their audit season.

“We have had calls around the firm” from Laventhol clients, said Ronald Merriman, managing partner of the Costa Mesa office of KPMS Peat Marwick.

“Companies have to move very quickly,” he said, “to decide what their options are and make sure they make their year-end deadlines for tax and financial reporting required by lenders and regulatory authorities such as the IRS.”

Gary Johnson, managing partner for Ernst & Young in Irvine, said he also expects to pick up business from Laventhol’s demise.

“We have had a couple calls, and we are pursuing them,” he said.

Michael Meyer, managing partner for the Newport Beach office of Kenneth Leventhal & Co., a national real estate accounting firm, noted that for years people have been confusing his firm with Laventhol because of the name similarity and because both firms do a lot of work for hotels and restaurants. He said his office had received some inquiries from lower-level managers at client firms who worried that Kenneth Leventhal might be in trouble.

“Our firm is so strong financially and has such a growing client base that we don’t want any confusion,” said Meyer, who also expects to get some calls from Laventhol clients in Orange County.

But he added that to a large extent accounting is “a personal-service business,” so companies tend to develop a loyalty to accountants that they know.

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