After 80 years in business, the Shreveport, Lousiana-based accounting firm Heard, McElroy & Vestal, LLC has gone multinational with an office in Ahmedabad, India. The Indian office, which opened Aug. 3, will join the growing company’s roughly 170 employees in Shreveport, Monroe and Longview.
Ahmedabad is the largest city in the western Indian province of Gujarat and a UNESCO World Heritage site, as well as a prime location to find sharp accounting professionals, Roy Prestwood, HMV’s Managing Partner, told The Shreveport Bossier City Advocate. According to CPA|Trendlines, the number of U.S. accounting graduates “has fallen to its lowest level in roughly 20 years, it said. “The tax profession is facing a severe and deepening talent drought.”
The trend encouraged Prestwood to look beyond traditional hiring markets and build out a Global Capability Center in India . “We were looking for teammates, and so it adds an additional level of capacity for us. We’ve hired folks that are CPAs, chartered accountants, enrolled agents, and so they have credentials all of their own and they’re there to support our team here in the United States.”
Amritt estimates that over half a million Indians work at Global Capability Centers in India run by Deloitte, KPMG, Accenture, Cap Gemini, Ernst & Young and other CPA related firms.
