SPAC Audit Kings: How Soaring IPO Market Ensnared Marcum, Withum

The fortunes of two mid-sized accounting firms rose and fell with the SPAC craze, sending auditors into overdrive as they vetted the financial statements of a surge of blank-check companies hunting for Wall Street’s next big deal.

Those two firms, Marcum LLP and Withum Smith+Brown PC, reaped millions in special purpose acquisition company audit fees. As their revenues soared, so did their workloads. Missed deadlines and pervasive errors mounted as overloaded partners churned out audit after audit, a Bloomberg Tax analysis found.

Now that work is under scrutiny as regulators pursue SPAC auditors for shoddy work and craft rules to ...