Green & Seifter, Certified Public Accountants takes new name

SYRACUSE  —  A Syracuse accounting firm has put the names of its managing partners on the books.

Green & Seifter, Certified Public Accountants, PLLC changed its name in a move effective Sept. 28. The firm is now known as Grossman St. Amour Certified Public Accountants PLLC.

The new name reflects the firm’s managing partners — Gary Grossman and Steven St. Amour. They’ve owned it since 2000, leaving the firm without a named partner for over a decade.

The Green & Seifter name was a relic of the accounting firm’s founding by Edward Green in 1957, according to Grossman. He and St. Amour opted to keep Green’s namesake after they acquired the firm, he says.

“We retained the name for name-recognition purposes,” Grossman says.

For years, the accounting firm carried a similar moniker to a law practice Green founded in 1961, which was known until recently as Green & Seifter, Attorneys, PLLC. The two firms still have a close relationship, sharing some space at One Lincoln Center at 110 W. Fayette St. in downtown Syracuse, where they are both headquartered.

The law practice and accounting firm don’t share ownership — they haven’t for over a decade. Nonetheless, a shift at the top of the law practice still sparked a new name for the accounting firm, Grossman says.

In February, the law firm changed its name to Bousquet Holstein PLLC. The move came a few weeks after its only remaining named principal, Lowell Seifter, departed to take a general- counsel position at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center in Syracuse.

“When Lowell left the law firm in February of this year, we then had Bousquet Holstein and Green & Seifter Certified Public Accountants,” Grossman says. “So to avoid the confusion that caused, we intended to change our name as well.”

The accounting firm decided not to change its name immediately because it was in the middle of the busy tax season, Grossman adds. Instead, it made plans to take on the names of its own managing partners later in the year.

Since they acquired the accounting firm in 2000, Grossman and St. Amour have added seven more partners. Grossman St. Amour CPAs now employs about 35 accountants and a total of 40 people.  The firm also shares some support staff with Bousquet Holstein.

Grossman declined to share revenue totals for the firm, but he predicts revenue will grow by about 5 percent in its 2013 fiscal year, which started in July. That would be similar to the pace of revenue growth in 2012, he says.

The accounting firm leases about 15,000 square feet of space on several floors of One Lincoln Center. It occupies space on the building’s seventh floor and also shares some space on its eighth and ninth floors, according to Grossman. It still shares that space with Bousquet Holstein.

“Even though we’re owned separately, we share some space,” Grossman says. “We’ve kept on that arrangement [since Ed Green sold the firms]. We don’t share systems and we don’t share accounting systems.”

Grossman St. Amour’s specialties include accounting, auditing, bookkeeping, taxation, financial planning, business valuation, and fraud examination and deterrence. Clients won’t notice any differences except the new name, Grossman says.

“Nothing else in the firm has changed,” he says. “We continue to focus on providing our clients with the highest-quality services, and we continue to anticipate issues.”        

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com