CBIZ Brand Guidelines: From Century Business Services to Marcum & Grant Thornton

An environmental company that became an accounting business.

CBIZ is an Ohio accounting, tax, insurance and advisory business. English Wikipedia places its headquarters in Independence, Ohio, and trade coverage calls it Cleveland-based. Its corporate roots are unusual for an accounting business. Wikipedia traces them to 1987, when Stout Environmental was formed as a Delaware corporation, and CPA Practice Advisor referred in 2024 to CBIZ’s “37-year history,” which points to the same year.

The early history is a chain of corporate changes. According to Wikipedia, Republic Industries bought Stout in 1992 and in April 1995 spun the business off as Republic Environmental Systems. In October 1996 that company was merged with Century Surety Company into a newly formed entity, International Alliance Services. In 1997 it sold its environmental services operations, and in December 1997 it changed its name to Century Business Services. The shorter name CBIZ, Inc. followed in August 2005.

CBIZ was a listed company for three decades. Wikipedia says its shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange from 1996, under the symbol CBZ from 1997. In July 2026 CPA Practice Advisor described it as the only publicly traded accounting services provider in the United States, and Wikipedia calls it one of the largest accounting, insurance brokerage, financial and advisory services providers in the country.

Its accounting work rests on a partnership with a separate firm. Since 1998, Wikipedia says, CBIZ and CBIZ CPAs, formerly Mayer Hoffman McCann P.C., have worked in an alternative practice structure in which they act as separate, independent legal entities, sharing a tax and consulting practice that is a division of CBIZ. CPA Practice Advisor places the CPA firm in Kansas City, Missouri, and describes the link as an administrative service agreement lasting more than 25 years.

Three practice groups and the Marcum deal.

Wikipedia describes three practice groups. Financial Services covers accounting, tax compliance and advisory work, with specialties such as valuation, litigation support and transaction advisory services. Benefits and Insurance Services covers group health benefits and property and casualty insurance brokerage, retirement plan advice, payroll and human capital management. National Practices covers managed networking and hardware services and healthcare consulting. Wikipedia lists a run of acquisitions, including Marks Paneth in 2022, several firms in 2023 and, in 2026, BINDZ Consulting in India.

The largest came in 2024. On 31 July 2024 CBIZ announced that it would acquire Marcum, a New York firm founded in 1951 as Marcum & Kliegman. CPA Practice Advisor called it the largest acquisition in CBIZ’s history. The deal followed the line of CBIZ’s own structure: CBIZ took Marcum’s non-attest business, and the CPA firm, by then called CBIZ CPAs, took its attest business.

The acquisition closed on 1 November 2024. CPA Practice Advisor reported then that the combined business had more than 10,000 team members and more than 135,000 clients, and that the Marcum brand had been retired. Before the deal, CBIZ ranked eleventh among US accounting firms by revenue, according to INSIDE Public Accounting figures quoted by the same publication; by July 2026 it was eighth.

At the closing, the magazine described Marcum as a firm with 43 offices in major US markets, more than 35,000 clients and more than 3,500 professionals, offering tax, attest, accounting and advisory services as well as technology solutions and executive search and staffing. Its name was the first to disappear in this story; CBIZ’s own would follow.

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.

A name that will give way to Grant Thornton.

Two years after the Marcum deal, CBIZ itself was sold. On 29 July 2026 Grant Thornton Advisors, the non-attest arm of Grant Thornton in the United States, agreed to acquire CBIZ in an all-cash transaction supported by the investment firm New Mountain Capital, which has held a majority stake in Grant Thornton since 2024, CPA Practice Advisor reported. The acquisition was completed on 2 November 2026, according to a joint release from Grant Thornton Advisors, New Mountain Capital and CBIZ. CBIZ became wholly owned by Grant Thornton Advisors, and its shares stopped trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The release described the result as the fifth-largest US provider of professional services, tax and advisory offerings, within a Grant Thornton Advisors platform of more than 34,500 professionals in more than 25 countries and territories, whose member firms operate as separate legal entities. It also changed the brand: the combined CBIZ and Grant Thornton Advisors organisation “will ultimately go to market under the Grant Thornton brand.” At closing, CBIZ’s Benefits & Insurance Services segment was set up as an independent company backed by New Mountain Capital.

One part was still pending. A separate attest transaction between the licensed CPA firm Grant Thornton LLP and CBIZ CPAs was described in the 2 November 2026 release as expected to close later in the year. The release said CBIZ CPAs would then remain a separate licensed public accounting firm during a transition period, after which it was expected to be integrated with Grant Thornton LLP.

For a design guide, CBIZ shows a shortened corporate name carrying a listed company from its 2005 renaming to its 2026 sale, and an acquirer’s brand then set to take its place. Compare Grant Thornton, the network whose US advisory firm bought CBIZ, and EisnerAmper, another US firm reshaped by private capital. For this guide we use a forest green, a sage and a brass with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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