Lori Reiner is the Partner-in-Charge of EisnerAmper in Philadelphia. Founded in 1965, EisnerAmper has grown into one of the largest accounting firms in the US, with offices in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, and the Cayman Islands. Today, the firm provides audit, advisory, bankruptcy, employee benefit, tax, and financial services clients in a variety of industries ranging from construction to real estate to sports and entertainment. Lori is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA), and has earned honors from the Philadelphia community for her accounting expertise and leadership, including a “Best 50 Women in Business” award, a Small Business Administration “Woman in Business Advocate” award, and a Young Leadership Award from the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.
Lori Reiner spoke with citybizlist publisher Edwin Warfield for this interview.
EDWIN WARFIELD: Tell us about EisnerAmper. What kinds of clients does the firm serve, and what industries is it active in?
LORI REINER: EisnerAmper is one of the largest accounting firms in the nation. We have offices around the United States as well as around the globe, and we focus on providing accounting and advisory services to a wide range of businesses and individuals. Here in Philadelphia, we have about 165 colleagues in our Center City offices.
EisnerAmper has a very diverse client base. We service everything from startup companies to public companies, and everything in between. So, if you take a look at our client base what is that “in between”? It starts out with startup companies, closely held companies, privately owned – some of which are family owned, sometimes many generations of families. A lot of the private companies are private equity-backed. Even those that started out as private companies, they may have decided to be recapitalized so that they bring in outside investors. And then there are those that are portfolio companies for private equity. And then we have our private company clients as well. So, we really serve a wide range of companies, really from the very beginning of their life through to their ultimate exit.
EisnerAmper has always gone to market based on industry as well as our geographies in the markets in which we serve. The industries that we service here in Philadelphia are very similar to the industries that the firm services nationally – for example, financial services. We do over 1,400 hedge funds, private equity funds, broker-dealers, registered investment advisers – so very big in financial services. We do big real estate practice. Real estate is commercial real estate, home builders, so residential real estate, construction companies, management companies. We also have a big technology practice. Technology could be software, software-as-a-service, any of the techs – medtech, edtech, fintech, adtech – as well as life sciences: a lot of therapeutic companies, medical device companies, as well as drug development companies. So, in addition to financial services and real estate and technology, we also have a wide range of what I would call our “commercial practice” that is either manufacturing or distributing, services companies – a lot of them are B2B, so they may be professional services like lawyers and engineers and architects, and they may just be a company that’s performing a service for another company.
