September!

Welcome back, everyone! Labor Day weekend is over, but hot summer weather doesn’t seem to be—at least not here in New York, where the temperatures have been sizzling the past few days. Despite that, there’s back-to-business energy in the air, and the hallways are full at Marcum as many of our people return from well-deserved summer vacations.

Many of our team members have been on the move, and we’ve just announced 31 new partner promotions. These new partners exemplify our firm’s dedication to excellence and bringing together bright people with unique experiences, world-class proficiency, and the innovative drive that defines Marcum’s entrepreneurial spirit.

Marcum also promoted 509 associates. We have always been big believers in talent development, and as our firm has grown, we are amplifying our commitment in many ways. Congratulations to all.

I’m always delighted to see our team members moving ahead because we strive to keep our firm on the cutting edge when it comes to offering many career development and progression opportunities and rewarding high performance. There is a lot of competition for talent in the accounting profession. Although our unique culture and M&A strategy have enabled us to stay ahead of the pack and resulted in recognition from Vault and a variety of regional publications as a best place to work, we can’t rest on our laurels. Keeping the best people on our staff means we need to make sure they have the training and professional experiences they need to keep moving up the ranks—and then recognize them when they are ready.

As CEO, I’ve challenged myself this year to continue building on a culture that has made our firm attractive to top professionals from around the world. To serve our clients well, we need to make sure there is no reason for the talented people on our team to go elsewhere. We’ll be doing a lot of work in the coming year to continue building on the foundation that has kept many team members serving our clients for years and sometimes decades. This is a relationship business, and there’s no better way to maintain strong relationships with our clients than to attract and keep great people.

On a personal note, Tracy and I had some wonderful time away from the City with our family on Long Island and many occasions to break out the barbeque, beach towels, and golf clubs over the past couple of months, and I hope you enjoyed the summer, too. I’m looking forward to continuing to grow our firm in the months to come and will have a lot of news to share in this column. As always, I welcome the thoughtful responses many of you send and look forward to hearing from you.