The auditor has led the Düsseldorf company as CEO since 2019.
(Photo: Warth & Klein Grant Thornton)
The names of the two founders will still be emblazoned on the company sign for a good three weeks, and then it will be over. The Düsseldorf auditing company Warth & Klein, number ten on the German market, is changing its name. Under the new name Grant Thornton, CEO Michael Häger wants to lead the company into the next record year.
Grand Thornton is the international network of auditors to which Warth & Klein has belonged for several years. So far, this was shown to the outside by the extended company name, now it is completely in the foreground. “Belonging to Grant Thornton is one of the most important levers for our growth strategy,” says Häger in an interview with the Handelsblatt.
Warth & Klein made a big leap forward in the 2021 financial year (ending September 30), as the figures published on Wednesday show. Sales increased by 15 percent to 169 million euros. With purely organic growth of eleven percent, the Düsseldorf-based company proved to be stronger than its biggest competitors and than the overall market in the difficult year of the pandemic.
For Warth & Klein, founded in 1958, it was the best year in the company’s history. All areas have grown, from auditing and tax advice to consulting. But the core business with balance sheet attestations stood out with growth of 17 percent. The company also made itself known to the public as a neutral expert for the insolvency administrator of Wirecard and Grenke AG.
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Now the Düsseldorf-based company has other major mandates in its sights, especially among the internationally active German medium-sized companies, but also among the listed companies up to the Dax 40. Warth & Klein has already applied for the renowned auditor contract from SAP in 2021 – unsuccessfully, but : “We keep our sights on the Dax companies,” says Häger.
Read more about the development of the large auditing firms
As part of Grant Thornton, Warth & Klein wants to be able to compete with PwC, EY, KPMG and Deloitte. Because no matter what segment the customers come from: In the course of their own globalization, companies also demand a strong international presence from their auditors. Anyone who does not prove this is screened out even by medium-sized companies at the beginning of the selection process.
“Without an international network, auditors have no chance with large companies today,” says Häger. Warth & Klein has been cooperating with other national subsidiaries of Grant Thornton since 2000 and has been the exclusive German member of the sixth-largest network of auditors since 2011.
Nothing will change organizationally: Warth & Klein will remain an independent company under the new name, owned by the 62 partners. But the cooperation should be deepened, also in terms of personnel. The company wants to offer the coveted young auditors more foreign assignments in their careers.
But it’s also about more power. All large auditing companies will have to invest heavily in digitally controlled audits in the next few years. Artificial intelligence and data analysis should make the attestation of balance sheets faster and more reliable.
Because there is still no “Microsoft for auditing accounts”, the auditing companies are developing their own software solutions for digital auditing. The “Big Four” invest billions in this business, smaller companies can hardly manage the investments on their own.
To this end, the member companies of Grant Thornton, which together had sales of around seven billion dollars (more than six billion euros) in 2021, want to join forces. “The digitization of processes will not only get a strong boost from customers, but also from auditing companies themselves this year,” Häger expects.
More: Artificial intelligence can prevent accounting scandals like Wirecard