HLB Brand Guidelines: Hodgson, Landau, Brands & a Name Shortened in 1990

A British, an American and a Dutch firm.

HLB International was formed in 1969, according to English Wikipedia, which cites the European Accountancy Yearbook 1992/93. The encyclopedia describes it as a global network of independent advisory and accounting firms whose members offer audit, accounting, tax and business advisory services, and it lists the network as a member of the Forum of Firms, the grouping of international networks that take on cross-border audit work.

The three letters are a record of early members. English Wikipedia says the name came from Hodgson Landau Brands, built from the names of three founding firms. Hodgson Harris in Britain had been founded in 1877 by Robert Hodgson. Mann Judd Landau in the United States began in 1926 as Fred Landau & Co. Brands & Wolff came from the Netherlands. Over time all three names disappeared through mergers, the encyclopedia says, and in 1990 the network shortened its own name to HLB International, leaving initials that no longer spell out any current member.

The British side of that history is complicated. English Wikipedia, citing a family tree published by the ICAEW, says the network’s founder firm in the United Kingdom was Fuller Jenks Beecroft & Co, which merged with Mann Judd in 1975 and then left the network to join Touche Ross, a firm that is now part of Deloitte. In Australia and New Zealand some firms that still carry the Mann Judd name remain HLB members, the encyclopedia adds.

The network is run from Britain. English Wikipedia says its executive office is in London, with a Council, a Chairman and an Executive Committee, and three main international technical committees covering advisory work, tax, and audit and financial reporting. It gives the network’s reach as 155 countries on five continents, with 55,538 partners and staff in 1,398 offices, figures it dates to 2025.

Kidsons, Numerica, Vantis and a federation.

After Fuller Jenks Beecroft left, Hodgson Harris succeeded it as the UK member and gave the network its “H.” English Wikipedia says that through successive mergers the firm became Hodgson Impey, then Kidsons Impey, and finally HLB Kidsons, taking the network’s initials into its own name. In 2002 it left HLB for the British firm Baker Tilly, the encyclopedia says, citing Accountancy Age of 14 February 2002; that firm was not the same body as the Baker Tilly International network.

HLB then tried a different model in Britain. According to English Wikipedia, it invited Numerica, a listed company that bought up accountancy practices, to become its UK member in 2002. In 2005 Numerica, then in financial difficulty, was mostly taken over by another listed consolidator, Vantis, which replaced it as HLB’s UK member. At the end of June 2010 Vantis also failed and was broken up, the encyclopedia says, citing Accountancy Age of July 2010.

The response was to rebuild the UK membership from partnerships. English Wikipedia says that, having depended for several years on the plans of a public company, HLB had by the end of 2010 built a federation of local partnerships, following its model in the United States and elsewhere. Accountancy Age reported in September 2010, as cited by the encyclopedia, that Menzies, Hazlewoods and Lovewell Blake joined HLB from the Praxity network; Hawsons, Beever and Struthers and French Duncan followed.

The network has also recruited in the United States. CPA Practice Advisor reported on 18 January 2022 that three firms from the US top 100 — Rehmann, Whitley Penn and Miller Cooper — had joined HLB at the same time, and quoted the network’s chief executive, Marco Donzelli, who had taken that post in April 2017 according to English Wikipedia. The same article said HLB had been named Network of the Year at the 2020 Digital Accountancy Awards, and described it as the 11th-largest global network at the time.

Design and documentation.

Mid-tier accounting networks are built from independent firms that agree to share a name, standards and referrals. The networks in this guide describe themselves that way: their legal pages typically state that the international body provides no client services and that each member firm is a separate legal entity. The brand therefore has to do a lot of work, because it is often the main thing the member firms have in common.

Their identities tend to be restrained. A plain wordmark, usually set in a sans and paired with one strong colour, carries across dozens of countries and languages, and a short strapline or brand promise often sits beneath it. Many networks have moved from long lists of partners’ surnames to shorter names, initials or a single shared label, and some member firms have dropped their local names to take the network brand.

Their websites follow a common pattern. A global map or country selector leads to member firms; service pages are grouped under audit and assurance, tax and advisory, with industry pages for sectors such as manufacturing, real estate, nonprofits or the public sector. Insight articles on tax changes, regulation and technology fill the news pages, and many networks publish annual revenue figures and awards in press releases.

Two further page types are typical of the profession. Transparency reports, which many audit firms publish, set out governance and quality-control arrangements. Graduate and early-career recruitment pages are prominent too, because recruiting trainees is a constant task for the profession. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand’s founding, ownership and network, and marks clearly what rests on the firm’s own word.

Initials that travel ahead of local names.

The initials do most of the identity work. Because the founding names have gone, “HLB” now reads as a brand in its own right, and member firms often put it in front of their own names. When the South African audit, tax and advisory firm CBS Group joined in July 2025, Bizcommunity reported on 2 July that it would trade from 1 July as HLB CBS Group (South Africa), with three offices rebranding. The same report put the network at more than 51,948 professionals in 155 countries and called it the eighth-largest network of independent accounting and advisory firms.

The pattern is an old one for HLB. In Britain the Kidsons firm called itself HLB Kidsons before it left in 2002. English Wikipedia describes HLB as a network of independent firms rather than a single firm, so the prefix sits beside a member’s local name instead of replacing it.

In its January 2022 report, CPA Practice Advisor said HLB placed a strong focus on technological innovation, including the role of AI in service delivery, and kept expanding a member intranet of resources and tools; the new US members cited the network’s technology, its global presence and its client service among their reasons for joining. English Wikipedia also records a Women in Accounting initiative, known as WinA, and community and “green” initiatives by member firms in countries including Australia, Germany, Japan and the United States.

For a design guide, HLB shows how a network can turn three surnames into initials that outlive every firm they named, and then lend those letters to members as a prefix. Compare Deloitte, the firm that absorbed HLB’s first British member through Touche Ross, and Nexia, another London-linked network of independent firms. For this guide we use a deep blue, a chalk white and a teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep HLB’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.