Reading Room

ADT Q3 2026 results; guidance withdrawn pending the Thrive transaction.

Target company press release announcing the definitive agreement.

Acquirer statement on the ADT agreement; source of the ">75 businesses" figure.

Trade-press report on Baldwin's preliminary Q3 figures.

Report on Beacon Holdings' acquisition of Ganaz, citing the founder's post.

Definitive agreement at approximately $7.7 billion enterprise value: about $4.6 billion equity purchase price and $3.1 billion net debt. Expected close Q1 2027.

Reports the Sequence–DFO agreement.

Announces the Baldwin agreement and welcomes DFO and Affinity Partners as Sequence partners. An author comment points to engineering and deployment hiring.

Explains refounding scaled service businesses with engineers, operators, patient ownership, and Atlas. Reports BankSouth loan-stage and turnaround improvements.

Profiles RRBB practitioners including Rob Quick, Dave Roth, and Susan DiPaolo. Recounts a prior software initiative that failed because document-scanning work was not adopted.

Announced September 1, 2026, from Salem, Utah. Current announced that Preferred CFO joined the platform. Based in the greater Salt Lake City metro area, Preferred CFO provides fractional CFO, controller, outsourced accounting, strategic finance, and capital-raising support to businesses nationwide, and has operated for more than a decade, with the firm dating its founding to 2013. Its work covers forecasting and financial modeling, cash flow management, budgets and operating plans, capital preparation and raises, and strengthening controller functions. Current framed the addition as advancing its strategy to build one of the country's leading advisory organizations and as a milestone in its national expansion, positioning the combination of experienced professionals, modern technology, specialized expertise, and strategic advisory as the direction of the profession. Preferred CFO said clients should expect near-term continuity with the same professionals, while joining Current gives the firm access to broader technology, AI systems, national resources, and collaboration across the network. Existing client relationships, local leadership, and culture are retained.

Reports over $2 billion in new capital at a $12 billion valuation, over $3 billion raised since inception, and more than 70 businesses. Announces expansion into built-environment services.

Announces a $35 million Series B led by The General Partnership and Allen Shim joining as president/CFO. Describes a permanent holdco with embedded technologists.

Announced July 9, 2026, from Somerset, New Jersey. RRBB announced its fifth tuck-in acquisition since joining Current in August 2023, growing from roughly $20 million in revenue at the time it joined to a $44 million platform. RRBB was Current's first partner firm. Two months after joining, it added Mendonca & Partners Certified Public Accountants LLC, an international tax firm in Union, New Jersey with import/export expertise and approximately $8 million in revenue. The release frames RRBB as a pioneer within the network, presenting its sequence of tuck-ins as a repeatable model combining integration, technology enablement, access to capital, and global service delivery to drive both inorganic and organic growth. RRBB offers accounting, advisory, and consulting services from offices in New Jersey and New York. Current, founded by Jake Sloane and Frank Zhang and backed by Thrive Holdings, is described as a national partnership of more than 30 accounting and advisory firms built on local leadership and entrepreneurial autonomy, and was named to Accounting Today's list of best firms for technology.

Episode page highlights trust, permanent capital, the acquisition machine, and the operating platform. Includes useful chapter timestamps.

Describes permanent ownership alongside a central operating platform, engineering help, and local company continuity.

Headline reports a $225 million round; visible text describes permanent ownership and more than 30 acquisitions.

Argues that relationships and professional judgment become more valuable as routine work gets cheaper. Makes permanent ownership, practitioner ownership, and organizational change central.

Confirms the rename and continuity of the accounting platform. Describes local ownership, branding, leadership, and the Tax AI initiative.

Describes a practitioner-feedback and evaluation loop for Tax AI. Reports a 7,000-return pilot, roughly one-third less preparation time, and about 50% greater throughput.

Announced May 20, 2026, from Jacksonville. FIS announced that BankSouth, a $1.6 billion-asset community bank based at Lake Oconee, Georgia, selected the FIS core banking platform to power its retail and business banking lines. The bank framed the conversion as part of a broader data and technology strategy. The selection followed BankSouth's March 2026 announcement of a strategic partnership with Sequence Holdings, the permanent holding company deploying engineers and AI tooling into the bank's operations, and coverage connected the two moves as parts of the same modernization effort.

Announced March 2026, from Greensboro, Georgia. BankSouth, a $1.6 billion-asset community bank, announced a strategic partnership with Sequence Holdings, a permanent holding company that improves the operations of established businesses through technology. Under the partnership, a team of Sequence engineers — with backgrounds at Palantir, Scale AI, and Apple — works alongside BankSouth's staff to build and deploy AI-powered tools, framed around a human-first approach to community banking and BankSouth's roughly 80-year history. Sequence chief executive Michael Lee, a financial services and technology investor, joined BankSouth's board of directors. Sequence took a minority position in the bank. The partnership followed Sequence's emergence from stealth with a $75 million seed round led by Conviction and 8VC and a Series A led by Lux Capital, joined by Definition, Avenir, Chris Ré, and other institutional investors. Sequence is based in New York and deploys engineers alongside a proprietary technology platform. Latham & Watkins represented Sequence on both the partnership and the financings.