Jennifer Sieg sits down with Warren Mead, former KPMG chief operating officer and founder of Sumer, the accountancy firm with a unique mission to help Britain’s SMEs.
Warren Mead was 26 years into his corporate career at Big Four accounting firm KPMG before realising he had an unfulfilled knack for entrepreneurship.
How could he, a leading businessman in the accountancy space, use his skills better to support the “lifeblood” of Britain’s economy?
After over two and a half decades of watching KPMG’s workings, Mead packed in his role as chief operating officer and set out to start his own firm — but with the ambition to change the way the SME-focused support industry works.
Operating on a ‘shared ownership model’ and acquisition strategy, his private-equity-backed firm Sumer was launched in 2023 to acquire high-growth local SME-focused practices that share the same ethos and values and form them into well-supported regional hubs.
In turn, Sumer vows to uphold individual identities and brands, meaning that even though they’ve been acquired, they remain local and feel local.
Some of Sumer’s most recent acquisitions include accountancy firms Cowgills, with a fee income of over £20m, and EQ Accountants, with over £9m in revenue.
“We’re not just your average accountancy group,” Mead tells Ambition A.M.
“Unlike traditional firms, we handle everything from our core accounting and tax services to HR, legal, technology, and procurement support.”
One year and eight acquisitions later, Sumer has reached a turnover of £110m, grown to 1,000 staff, and has 40 office locations across the UK and Ireland.
“It’s a huge market… and it’s hugely fragmented,” he adds.
Spotting the gap in the market
With the accountancy market alone worth more than £10bn, Mead couldn’t help but notice the need to support—and maintain—the local firms that support Britain’s entrepreneurial community.
If a start-up is looking for help – whether it be in HR, accounting, or legal – odds are they’ll seek out a local office first. But what if that office doesn’t have the resources, funding, or support needed to assist?
In Mead’s view, the answer to this question was a no-brainer, especially with the past decade being nothing short of turbulent for the UK’s small businesses.
“We’re not interested in taking the crumbs from the Big Four accountants’ table. It’s about forging genuine relationships and crafting personalised solutions,” Mead says.
“They’ve [SMEs] dealt with Brexit and supply chain issues and then Covid and then the cost of living crisis and then rising interest rates and political instability, flip flop economic policy, you know, you name it,” he adds.
The lack of breaths in between each challenge is not surprising – but while Sumer might not be the first new business effort being made to boost Britain’s entrepreneurial growth, Mead certainly plans to make it a game-changing one.
We ought to be more proud of our entrepreneurs in this country.
Warren Mead
With some of the UK’s leading regional firms now under Sumer’s growing umbrella, Mead says they will continue to focus their efforts on owner-managed and not-for-profit sectors, ultimately setting them apart from the rest in the long term.
It might just be a good place to start, given that the nation’s purpose-led boom continues to climb and nine out of 10 privately owned businesses remain family-run.
“If we carry on doing it in the way we are – which is the right way with the right values, the right ethics – I see no reason why we couldn’t be a billion revenue business in the next five years or so.”
The numbers might signal bright days ahead for Mead and the Sumer team, but he reassures me that it is much more than the money that keeps him going.
“I always get more enthused by the human side of it than the financial outcome,” he adds, with a smile.
In fact, it wasn’t until he assembled 100 of his partner level colleagues in one room that he had his first official “lightbulb moment”.
“You could see the enthusiasm and the passion and it just became very, very real,” he says, still smiling.
“So yes, we have grown rapidly and we’re £110m in revenue and very, very profitable in year one – which is extraordinary – but actually seeing the difference that it’s making to people, I think for me is the thing that really sets it apart.”
Letting others take the wheel
Despite his 26 years in the business, Mead is well aware of his limitations and acknowledges that any successful business venture must hire staff that are better – and smarter – than the founder to keep moving forward.
“As an entrepreneur, you want to do it your way, but actually what you realise over time is your way isn’t always – and quite often isn’t – the best way,” Mead says.
“My job is really to be a cheerleader, for the business and for the people in the business and really to give them the tools and the confidence to fly.”
Moving forward, Mead plans to focus on what matters most – prioritising ”the power of human relationships and genuine connections.”
CV
Name: Warren Mead
Company: Sumer
Founded: January 2023
Staff: 1,000+ (we call them colleagues rather than ‘staff’)
Title: CEO
Age: 49
Born: Somerset
Lives: South Downs National Park
Studied: Exeter
Talents: Making things simple/creative writing
Motto: Focus on strengths. (Let me explain – I wasn’t great at science at school. The last thing society needs is a second-rate scientist!)
Most known for: My karaoke butchering of ‘Summer Nights’
First Ambition: To write a book