Robert Mayer, Prager Metis CPAs

Woodbury, NY Robert Mayer, CPA, partner in charge of the Long Island office of Prager Metis CPAs, LLC, sat down with the New York Real Estate Journal for a question-and-answer session.

Q: You recently came over to Prager Metis in a merger. Tell us about it.

A: I founded Mayer CPAs, a boutique accounting and advisory firm based on Long Island, in the 1990s. On March 4, we completed a merger with Prager Metis CPAs, a top 100 public accounting and consulting firm with eight offices in the U.S. and London.

Q: Why were you interested in merging with Prager Metis?

A: We have been working on this merger since September. If we were going to do a merger, we wanted to take our time and make sure it was with a firm that shared our values of providing proactive, personalized service to clients. We spoke to some larger firms that were looking for a Long Island presence – firms with hundreds of partners – but we felt we would be lost in a firm that size. Mayer CPAs had four partners, and Prager Metis had 40 partners. The four Mayer CPAs partners – Mark Ackerman, Marianna Mooney, my son, Stuart Mayer, and myself – became partners in the combined firm. There was a place in the new firm for all 22 of our people, which was very important to us – some of them have been with us since they graduated from college. I’m the partner in charge of the Long Island office, and I’m also on the firm-wide marketing committee with the two co-managing partners of Prager Metis, Glenn Friedman and David Neste.

The Mayer family.

At Mayer, we provided a wide range of advisory services to clients, including helping them sell their business. But when their business was sold, the accounting would be done by whoever acquired that business; we would still have the individual client, but the business fees were higher. It was like pedaling uphill – we were hitting the same numbers and constantly had to replace that business. Joining Prager Metis allowed us to add resources and expertise in specialty areas like forensic accounting and international business, to allow us to provide a wider range of services to clients. The merger gave Prager Metis more of a presence on Long Island. The firm already had an office in Plainview, which specializes in forensic accounting, business valuation and litigation support, but our firm provides a full range of accounting, tax and advisory services. 

Q: Where will the combined firm’s Long Island offices be located?

A: The partners and staff from Prager Metis’ Plainview offices, and some people from the Manhattan offices, will move over to our offices in Woodbury. We currently have 4,000 s/f and are adding 2,500 s/f of adjacent space that was available. We had two people in the Manhattan office of Mayer CPAs; they will move into one of Prager Metis’ Manhattan offices.

Shown (from left) are the partners at Mayer CPAs: Mark Ackerman, Robert Mayer, Marianna Mooney, and Stuart Mayer.

Q: You have a bit of a history with Prager Metis.

A: Early in my career, I left Arthur Andersen to join Prager and Fenton, which later merged with Metis Group to form Prager Metis. A lot of the firm’s clients were in the entertainment space, and we would do royalty audits and road tour audits for clients like the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. We would go on tour with the bands for months at a time, auditing concert receipts. But being on the road and away from my family wasn’t for me. I left after five years and joined another accounting firm and a building supply company before starting my own practice in my basement.

Q: What about your practice is special to clients, and to clients in the real estate industry in particular?

A: I focus heavily on consulting and business management; I look at myself as more of an entrepreneur than a debits-and-credits type of accountant. A lot of my clients are multi-generational businesses. I have my son and daughter working with me, so we can relate when we work with a business with two or three generations of family members. We hold our clients’ hands and help them make the transition so that the business can continue when the older generation is ready to pass the reins. Many real estate companies are very family-oriented, with multiple generations of family members. Anybody can do debits and credits, but if you can get the generations to work together and come to the same goals and conclusions, it benefits the company as well as the family unit.

We have quite a few clients who own and occupy their commercial buildings. We handle audits for co-ops, condos and homeowner associations and provide tax and a wide range of other services for commercial real estate companies, such as helping them structure a sale.

Prager Metis has a big real estate division and a large tax area in Manhattan, which has allowed us to increase the services we can offer our real estate industry clients.