Courtesy LeverPoint
By Jill Nagy
LeverPoint, a company based in Clifton Park that provides accounting, tax preparation, payroll and similar services to private equity and venture capital firms, has seen “exponential growth” in the 10 years since it became an independent company, according to its CEO, David MacPhee.
Its latest growth spurt came with the recent acquisition of Lamplighter Financial, a small California-based company providing similar services.
MacPhee was part of a group of employees who bought a division of Ayco, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, in 2007. The company, which became LeverPoint, then had 18 employees.
He said it now has some 150 employees and serves 108 clients with close to $50 billion in assets under management. MacPhee became the company’s CEO in 2009.
Aug. 7 was LeverPoint’s official anniversary date, but a party was held Aug. 25, with a Friday afternoon employee outing at Saratoga National Gold Course.
LeverPoint is headquartered at 5 Maxwell Drive, but it services clients throughout the United States, with the largest number in New York City. Although the company has few clients in upstate New York, MacPhee said he “doesn’t see taking the growth away from here and taking it someplace else.”
He expects to add between 20 and 30 new jobs in the coming year, mostly accountants and CPAs.
“We want to become the nation’s largest pure-play fund administrator in the not too distant future,” he said.
“We are challenged” in finding people to hire. Experienced accountants are “hard to come by these days,” he noted. “Experience is key.”
He said the company has “good relationships” with area colleges and universities and is able to attract good novice employees. “We have a young group here,” he noted.
The company tries to be competitive in its salaries and benefits, he said. It pays for training and CPA licensing and, in general, tries to provide “a good work environment and a very good work-life balance.”
The company assigns a dedicated team to work for each client company. Their fees are based upon the complexity of the work they have to do, not the size of the fund under management,.
Before helping to form LeverPoint, MacPhee was a vice president for finance and operations at Ayco, the Goldman Sachs subsidiary. Before that, he was a vice president and comptroller at KB Toys.
He is a CPA with a bachelors degree from Lafayette College and an MBA from Union College.
More information on LeverPoint can be found at leverpoint.com.