The odds are increasing that you may end up working under private equity ownership.
Across several industries, PE firms are scooping up more and more businesses. Consider accounting firms, where many CFOs have gotten their start: From 2020 through September 2025, there have been at least 90 private equity-related transactions and firm mergers, according to CPA Trendlines Research. Fifty-two of those occurred in 2025 alone, demonstrating PE’s quickly growing influence in the space.
“Projections suggest that over half of the top 30 firms could have PE ownership by the end of 2025, signaling a rapid shift in firm ownership models,” CPA Trendlines officials wrote in the report.
And it’s not just accounting. It’s estimated that private equity firms own about 10% of all apartment stock in the United States, Multifamily Dive reported in spring, citing research by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. Few industries appear immune to the wide net of private equity.
“When CFOs act only as ‘order-takers’, they risk credibility with both their management teams and boards.”
Nick Araco Jr.
CEO of CFO Alliance
Many firms tend to bill PE investments or outright ownership as a way to increase access to capital and grow their business. In announcing a minority investment from New Mountain Capital, Milwaukee-based accounting firm Wipfli, for instance, hailed the deal as “a moment to accelerate, scale with purpose and help even more organizations reach their full potential.”
While an injection of PE money can and often does provide the means to grow staff in the short term, owners are rarely in it for the long haul. That can pit founders’ long-term visions against a private equity firm’s goal to build and quickly sell.
CFOs who have lived through private equity transactions say there are several steps to take to navigate that tension and keep things running smoothly under new ownership.
Relationships matter
Kenneth Merritt, founder and managing partner of consulting firm Merritt Advisory Group, says, above all, CFOs should focus on building trusted relationships with new ownership, especially for times when the two sides may not see eye-to-eye. While finance chiefs are often called upon to tell compelling stories about the companies they work for, it’s even more important in private equity, Merritt says.
“CFOs in private equity situations, I think, need to be even more relationship savvy than they’ve been in the past,” he says.
At the outset, private equity firms are generally looking to understand a business’s financial performance and potential, and whether it has the right leaders in place, Merritt says. As he sees it, the finance chief is well-positioned to answer those kinds of questions. “The CFO is the individual that’s really going to tell the story,” Merritt says. “They’re the ones to frame up forecasts, and frame up scenarios for short- and long-term planning.”
Karen Livingston, a longtime CFO who has served under both private equity and venture capital, says finance chiefs need to strike a balance between serving as a “fiduciary backbone” and maintaining good sponsor relationships.
Livingston, who now runs her own consulting firm called Ascender CFO, says she’s navigated that balance by stating her “nonnegotiables” up front, regardless of ownership structure: GAAP integrity, clear lender covenants and single source of truth for KPIs.
“How we get there, I can be flexible on, but those really need to be there,” she says. “It’s kind of a mix of duty of care and board confidence.”
And, where many finance chiefs are often seen as overseeing the “department of no,” Livingston advocates a different perspective: “Yes, if.” That might look like carefully explaining the potential return on investment of a new piece of technology, for instance, alongside any accompanying risks.
What PE sponsors really want
For some founders and finance chiefs, the mere mention of private equity conjures images of new owners steamrolling over any and all decisions. The real picture, though, tends to be more nuanced.
“In my experience, private equity doesn’t want yes-men or yes-women,” says Tony Ciotti, CFO of business advisory Riveron, which itself traded hands between two private equity firms in 2023. “Sponsors want CFOs to be strategically aggressive.”
Nick Araco Jr., CEO of the CFO Alliance group, echoes those sentiments.
“A common pitfall I hear about from our CFO Alliance members is the temptation to simply execute on investor mandates without shaping the financial narrative themselves,” Araco says. “In this environment, that’s a costly mistake. When CFOs act only as ‘order-takers’, they risk credibility with both their management teams and boards. The strongest CFOs right now are those who are articulating the “why” behind financial decisions, offering context for trade-offs, and standing firm on protecting the business’s resilience through uncertainty.”
On the other side of the coin, Ciotti says he’s also observed some CFOs newly under PE ownership becoming “too reactive or defensive,” he says. Sometimes, it’s a matter of confusing what PE sponsors actually want in their teams.
Like Merritt, Ciotti strongly urged CFOs to build credibility and trust with new ownership. Delivering on what was promised, he says, is imperative. “Surprises are bad,” he says.
As Araco puts it: “The most successful CFO-PE partnerships are built on transparency and trust. Today’s investors want speed, but they also respect clarity.”
It’s worth noting, too, that PE ownership can, at times, open new resources for a finance team. “Between hiring, training, outsourcing and tech enablement, there have never been more options available to you,” says First Water Finance Founder and CEO Ben Lehrer of finance chiefs under private equity.
But, where a private equity firm gives, it will also expect a clear return on investment, alongside a clear accounting of resources used. “If you have a new PE sponsor,” Lehrer says, “chances are demands go up, not down.”
A shifting model
The private equity model is, of course, undergoing changes of its own. Observers in the space are noting longer hold periods than in the past, which has ramifications for how finance chiefs interact with sponsors. Research firm Private Equity Info reported in February that the median hold period has hit 5.8 years, which officials there say is the longest since they began tracking the metric.
Might that suggest a tipping point in private equity’s growing dominance?
Steven Kaplan, professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, who has studied private equity, explained that longer hold periods are partly the result of higher interest rates.
“Longer hold periods are indeed true,” he said in an email. “They are the result of the fact that sellers are holding out for higher prices that buyers are not willing to pay yet. Part of this is caused by the increase in interest rates since 2020. Part of this is also due to the high prices paid in 2020 to 2022 deals. Sellers want the companies to be worth more before selling.”
Kaplan said the rapid uptick in private equity buyouts stems from long-term fundraising by PE firms. “Private equity firms have raised a lot of capital over the years that they are putting to work,” he said. “At the same time, there are fewer public companies.”
For some founders, a private equity acquisition may look like a more attractive exit option than turning to the public markets.
Finance leaders maintain that, whether they’re working under private equity concerns, startups or publicly traded behemoths, their mission remains largely the same. As Riveron’s Ciotti puts it: “Finance’s mandate is unwavering regardless of what happens.”
