Tom Angelo
Managing Principal and CEO,
There’s a pace of growth that is appropriate for every firm. There’s a minimum barrier to stay relevant, but then I think each firm, including ours, has to grow at a pace that is fast enough yet comfortable enough for its current culture to support. CEO
The press report put it succinctly: “HBK CPAs & Consultants (HBK) has announced that Thomas M. Angelo, CPA, CITP, Principal-in-Charge of the firm’s Mid-Atlantic Region, has been named the firm’s Managing Principal and CEO. Tom will assume company leadership on September 1, 2024. He succeeds Christopher M. Allegretti, the firm’s Managing Principal and CEO since 2004.”
Tom grew up in Linden, New Jersey, where as a youngster his first job was delivering flowers from his parents’ flower shop. He has lived in Monmouth County for more than 20 years, the last three in Holmdel as Director of HBK’s Mid-Atlantic regional operations. He had been Principal-in-Charge of the firm’s Clark office since 2018, then with the consolidation of Clark and the firm’s Princeton office, moved the combined teams to their offices in the Bell Works building in May 2023.
“This is a great honor,” Tom told the press upon announcement of his new role at HBK, “especially to be succeeding Mr. Allegretti, the firm’s first and only CEO, who has overseen the firm’s incredible growth over the years to becoming one of the nation’s Top 50 accounting firms. I’m excited to take the baton as we engage the challenges facing accounting firms to provide clients the services most relevant to their success in the digital age.”
Tom’s HBK career began in 2018 with the merger of his previous firm, the Spire Group, with HBK. Among his initiatives, Tom started Spire’s information technology (IT) practice in 2011, which became Vertilocity with the merger. As Vertilocity, the firm’s technology practice continued to grow, including substantially as the COVID crisis required businesses to
rely increasingly on remote communications and their digital networks.
In fact, Tom will lead a firm that has been marked by remarkable growth in all areas of its business in recent years. His task, he proposes, will be to continue that growth in what is a rapidly changing industry.
“The era we’re in right now, especially the last three years, is one of an influx of third-party private equity companies, wealth management companies, other investors coming into our space and looking to invest in the profession, shake up the model to grow even faster than the previous decades’ average growth.
“That’s not us at HBK. To stay relevant, we need to grow at a pace that will allow not only our team members to continue to advance and have the best opportu-
nities available to them, but also to make the necessary investments, not only adding new team members, but in the technology that’s going to change the way we do work.
“You have to grow to have the resources to be able to do that. You’re not going to stay competitive in the marketplace from a service line perspective, that is, how you serve clients. You’re not going to create opportunities for existing team members and others you might want to add to your organization. And you won’t be able to make the necessary investments in technology that will transform what we’re doing going forward.
“What mean by that is if I told the partnership group that we’re going to double the size of the firm every year or we’re going to grow at 75 or 90 percent every single year, it would probably
break something, so you need balance, a level of growth that intersects with, or accommodates, our culture.
“It’s smart growth. There’s been an evolution in the industry where there was a race to the top in terms of top line growth, so a lot of firms viewed getting larger as the main goal. That’s been a pivoting to thinking a bit differently, that you have to grow the top line, but you also need to make sure that it’s healthy, profitable, and strategic growth. So taking on any client for the sake of taking on a client, or providing services that we really don’t have the expertise or the talent to do it properly is not going be the way to do it, because we’ll wind up with the wrong set of clients, the wrong set of people.
“Being highly focused in the industries we feel we’re good at and complement-
ing that with as many service lines as we competently can provide to right-size clients in that industry is the way we will grow.
“It’s a multifold approach, but continuing to build expertise in the industry Solutions groups that we’ve formed as our go-to-market strategy and complementing that with providing the right content and education to our clients, digital marketing, complementing our partner group with business development specialists within the firm to ensure we’re going after the right client and being able to serve that client.
“And adding the right people, finding people who have talents complementary to ours. We look at, are they entrepreneurial, do they view the industry as we do, that is, see opportunity outside
the traditional service lines. You’re going to first try to align with the right people and envision how we will build together with them. You have to deal with the fact that not everything’s going to fit perfectly; a merger or acquisition is a work in progress to create value for both sides. You have to understand that they’re buying into your overall strategy; that’s part of finding the right people.
“One of the major components of growth is making sure we’re providing the best client service possible. We are going to do more comprehensive client surveys this year to make sure we are providing the kind of service we think we are to ensure client retention. It’s one thing to acquire new clients, but making sure we’re expanding the existing client relationships and doing the right things by those clients is even more important.”