Grimes' tax-practice deal is a retention play

Kevin Grimes says he called Stevens and Ciccone Associates, not the other way around, and that detail matters because it tells you who wanted the deal: Stevens and Ciccone were not looking for a sale, while Grimes, chief executive of the $7 billion Westborough, Massachusetts RIA carrying his family's name, wanted their eight CPAs, their 800 clients, and the second generation that comes with them.

InvestmentNews first reported the transaction, in which the tax practice becomes S&C Tax Advisors inside Grimes & Company, a firm that has grown to 80 employees and is adding Andrew Hamil as chief operating officer after roles as chairman and president at Wealth Enhancement Trust Services and Fidelity Personal Trust Company. Both firms trace back through family generations: Grimes & Company was incorporated in 1999 by Tim Grimes, whose son Kevin now runs the firm while Tim remains chairman of the board and sole voting shareholder, according to the RIA's latest Form ADV, and Stevens and Ciccone's website dates Gary Stevens and Michael Ciccone to the start of their public accounting careers in 1978. Second-generation CPAs Samantha Stevens and Mark Ciccone are partners moving across, so the deal is a pairing of two family businesses, one buying the other, with each side's next generation already lined up.

Kevin Grimes is explicit about the purpose: "We're bringing in new clients every day, and we're just seeing a need for higher-end tax planning," he told InvestmentNews, citing equity compensation, M&A, and business exits as the complexity pushing clients toward the firm. Yet the tax team will not be turned loose on the existing book — Grimes said existing clients will keep their current CPA relationships while S&C Tax Advisors focuses on newly onboarded clients. That is the detail to price. If the goal were cross-selling tax prep to a $7 billion client base, the team would be aimed at it; instead, the acquisition is capacity for the next cohort of clients and a way to keep a referral engine inside the firm, where client referrals have long been part of organic growth and an in-house tax team shortens the distance from referral to retained household.

The money behind that capacity comes from Rise Growth Partners, Joe Duran's investment firm, which announced a minority investment in Grimes & Company in 2025. InvestmentNews's report does not include a purchase price, but a buyer who initiates against a seller that was not looking to sell typically pays for the inconvenience, and Kevin Grimes said the sellers "are looking for a long runway and to be part of something special for the long run." What the price buys is a four-decade-old client book, an eight-person CPA team with its second generation in place, and a Needham address in Kevin Grimes's hometown. The second generation moving over matters more than the first generation's history, because a tax acquisition is only worth its retention math if the clients know the faces that walk across.

The same logic explains the Hamil hire: Hamil is being asked to build trust and estate services at a firm that plans to expand beyond Massachusetts, and Grimes said, "We're looking across the entire country," adding that he would be more attracted to a firm outside Massachusetts as the firm builds a national footprint. Tax prep and trust work are the support structure for that expansion, giving a New England firm a service stack to lay over an acquired book anywhere; Grimes & Company runs custody with Schwab, Fidelity, and TradePMR, the platform Robinhood acquired in late 2024.

PWD's first read of the deal called it part of the in-house tax and estate push among mid-sized RIAs, and the house position has been that firms that build in-house tax and estate depth keep $5 million-plus households. This transaction is a test of that claim. Grimes is betting that a tax team serving newly onboarded clients will compound into retention, that households arriving through S&C Tax Advisors will not walk at the next succession moment. The bet is unprovable for years, but the structure is legible — an initiated deal, a minority PE backer, a family seller with a second generation staying on. The number to watch is not eight CPAs or 800 clients; it is what Grimes pays for its next out-of-state RIA, and whether S&C Tax Advisors is in the room when the next family firm takes a call it wasn't expecting.