Ebner Stolz grows business

• tur­no­ver 2013: 150.4 mil­lion eu­ros (+9.2 per­cent)
• au­dit-re­la­ted con­sul­ting fur­ther ex­pan­ded
• in­cre­asing im­port­ance of net­work Ne­xia In­ter­na­tio­nal

 
Stutt­gart, 2.4.2014: The au­diting and con­sul­ting firm Eb­ner Stolz once again grew and in­crea­sed its an­nual tur­no­ver to 150.4 mil­lion eu­ros. This is an in­crease in tur­no­ver of more than 9 per­cent com­pa­red to the year be­fore. In 2012, the tur­no­ver was 137.6 mil­lion eu­ros. „Our stra­tegy to fo­cus con­se­quently on mid-size com­pa­nies is quite suc­cess­ful“, Dr. Wolf­gang Russ, part­ner at Eb­ner Stolz, sums up. „All four busi­ness di­vi­si­ons - au­diting, tax ad­vice, le­gal ad­vice and cor­po­rate con­sul­ting - de­ve­lo­ped po­si­tively. We grow to­ge­ther with our cli­ents and have re­ached our am­bi­tious tur­no­ver aim for 2013.“

Most important developments of the business year

The de­mand and thus the clo­sures with mid-size com­pa­nies in­crea­sed noti­ce­able in 2013. „Our awa­ren­ess all over Ger­many in­crea­sed con­side­ra­bly and we es­pe­cially pro­fi­ted from our strong brand in the wes­tern part of Ger­many “, Dr. Wolf­gang Russ says. „Eb­ner Stolz is thus well-po­si­tio­ned on the mar­ket.”

Eb­ner Stolz’ growth ori­gi­na­ted mostly from lis­ted mid-size com­pa­nies. The or­ga­niza­tion now au­dits 38 lis­ted com­pa­nies and is com­pa­red to its com­pe­ti­tors on the 6th rank in Ger­many. SHW, Bas­tei Lu­ebbe, Cy­bits, In­dus Hol­ding and First Sen­sor are five man­da­tes which were gai­ned in the stock mar­ket seg­ment of the re­gu­la­ted mar­ket in 2013.

The ban­king sec­tor made pro­gress as well. The NF bank in Bre­men is the ne­west cli­ent in this branch. Fur­ther strong ra­tes of growth were achie­ved in the health and non-pro­fit com­pa­nies sec­tor.

In ad­di­tion, also the au­dit-re­la­ted ser­vices grew. Im­port­ant man­da­tes were va­lua­tion re­ports for the squeeze out of the Doug­las Hol­ding AG, the for­mer Demag Cra­nes AG (now Terex MHPS AG) as well as the Es­se­ner Els­ter Group SE, a for­mer com­pany part of the Ruhr­gas AG. Au­di­tors of the com­pany worked ad­di­tio­nally as ex­perts for the pro­ce­du­res of the in­sol­vent Hess AG and Qi­monda AG.

Key figures at a glance

Growth in all business sectors

31 per­cent share of tur­no­ver co­mes from the sec­tor of au­diting. Es­pe­cially the areas of IFRS, the au­dit-re­la­ted ser­vices, the tran­sac­tion con­sul­tancy - in par­ti­cu­lar due di­li­gence and eva­lua­tion of the com­pany - as well as IT re­vi­sion grew.

With 42 per­cent, tax ad­vice forms the big­gest part of the tur­no­ver. “The cross-bor­der con­sul­ting busi­ness, e.g. in the area of trans­fer pri­ces, and the more than pro­por­tio­nal ri­sing tax de­fense ad­vice in this seg­ment as well as the con­sul­tancy con­cerning na­tio­nal and in­ter­na­tio­nal ta­xable ques­ti­ons de­ve­lo­ped very well,” Prof. Dr. Ur­sula Ley, au­di­tor, tax ad­vi­sor and part­ner at Eb­ner Stolz, ex­plains. “We pro­fit par­ti­cu­larly from the smooth and un­com­pli­ca­ted col­la­bo­ra­tion in our strong part­ner net­work Ne­xia In­ter­na­tio­nal.” Very po­pu­lar for mid-size com­pa­nies was also the ques­tion how to or­ga­nize suc­ces­sion, be­fore the an­ti­ci­pa­ted re­form of the in­heri­tance tax be­co­mes ap­plica­ble.

The cor­po­rate con­sul­tancy adds 20 per­cent to the to­tal tur­no­ver. In the be­gin­ning of 2013, Eb­ner Stolz en­lar­ged the in­ter­di­sci­pli­nary com­pe­tence team re­struc­tu­ring th­rough the mer­ger with the Ma­nage­ment Team AG to over 60 ex­perts. Be­si­des the sup­port in re­struc­tu­ring, pro­jects re­la­ting to yield enhan­ce­ment and im­pro­ve­ment of cor­po­rate ma­nage­ment ad­ded to the growth in this sec­tor.

The law ad­vice di­vi­sion also grew stron­gly in its core areas un­der cor­po­rate law con­sul­ting, suc­ces­sion con­sul­ting as well as tran­sac­tion con­sul­ting. The field of se­cu­ri­ties law was able to grow par­ti­cu­larly well due to the con­sul­ting of the stock mar­ket launch of the publis­hing group Bas­tei Lu­ebbe. 

Good Start in 2014

Eb­ner Stolz aims to in­crease its tur­no­ver in the cur­rent busi­ness year to 160 mil­lion eu­ros. „We ex­pect a fur­ther po­si­tive busi­ness de­ve­lop­ment, par­ti­cu­larly in the sec­tor of mid-size com­pa­nies“, says Wolf­gang Russ. „The de­ve­lop­ment of the share of tur­no­ver in the four di­vi­si­ons will re­main about the same.”

New presence is aimed to strengthen brand additionally

In Oc­to­ber 2013, the au­diting and con­sul­ting firm reb­ran­ded its com­pany and is now cal­led „Eb­ner Stolz“. Af­ter the fu­sion to Eb­ner Stolz Mönning Ba­chem in the be­gin­ning of 2009, the name was now shor­tened to stress the con­ci­sion and dif­fe­ren­tia­tion of the brand. The pro­mise “al­ways there” ex­plains the un­der­stan­ding of con­sul­tancy at Eb­ner Stolz. “Each cli­ent has its own con­tact per­son who knows him well, is in­itia­tive and also thinks beyond the im­me­diate area of re­spon­si­bi­lity”, Russ em­pha­si­zes. “We un­der­stand the needs of em­ploy­ers be­cause we are a com­pany ba­sed on part­nership and are en­tre­pre­neurs as well.”

Cur­rently, Eb­ner Stolz pro­mo­tes its com­pany to be the ideal part­ner for mid-size com­pa­nies na­ti­onwide with a cam­paign at air­ports and in busi­ness ma­ga­zi­nes and po­si­ti­ons its­elf with the slo­gan “We can mid-size com­pa­nies.”