Hahn solo | The new managing principal of accounting firm Baker Newman Noyes sees opportunity in the wake of Enron
Photo/David A. Rodgers
Young blood: Charlie Hahn wants Baker Newman Noyes to add bigger firms to its client base
At just 44 years old, Charlie Hahn is relatively young for a Maine business leader, and that’s one of the reasons Baker Newman Noyes’ 23 principals tapped this young executive to lead the accounting firm and business consulting company into a new phase of fast growth.
“Our goal is to be the preeminent accounting firm in New England,” Hahn says. To get there, Hahn wants Baker Newman Noyes to sign up a number of the largest companies in each northeastern state as clients. It’s an ambitious shift for a company whose client base is currently made up primarily of small Maine businesses. “We have individual clients with high-net worth — hospitals, banks, credit unions, public companies,” he says. “But our bread and butter are family-owned businesses.”
Hahn took over from former Managing Principal Ellie Baker on Aug. 1. He previously had directed the company’s tax division, one of the firm’s four major departments along with auditing, health care and information technology. Hahn, who grew up in Norway in western Maine, started his career in 1985 when he interned at the accounting firm Ernst & Whinney’s in Rhode Island while earning a business and accounting degree from Bryant College in Smithfield, R.I. He later was hired full-time and moved to Ernst & Whinney’s Portland office, which became Ernst & Young after a 1989 merger. Hahn stayed on through the sale of the firm to its local partners, and in 1996 was made principal partner, a year after the company had merged with the local firm KPMG to become Baker Newman Noyes. Last year, the firm generated $22 million in revenue.
Baker, who led the company since 2003, has since returned to a full-time position assisting tax clients. Meanwhile, Hahn’s individual work with clients will decline to about 20% of his over-all duties. His major responsibilities will be steering Baker Newman Noyes toward what Hahn describes as abundant opportunities awaiting CPA firms in the current market.
Since the Enron Corp. scandal and the subsequent Arthur Andersen meltdown, federal legislation has required companies use multiple accounting firms. That means Baker Newman Noyes could grow at least 10% a year over the next five years, Hahn says, double its previous growth rate due to the increased regulation of business accounts.
The firm currently employs about 180 people who work in the firm’s Portland or Manchester, N.H. offices. Hahn says a changing market will likely require the firm to create new positions, but he wouldn’t say how many. The company has this year added an international tax expert to advise the growing numbers of clients doing international business. At the same time, advances in technology and software are helping accountants work more efficiently, reducing the need for firms to hire as many people as they would have done pre-Internet.
Software, too, has cut the amount of paper the company uses, and though Hahn guiltily points to a few reams of paper on his shelf, he describes the office as virtually paperless. “In the past you would see stacks and stacks of paper before Sept. 15, a big deadline for us” when personal and corporate tax extensions are due, Hahn says, while pointing to a now empty wall against which towers of papers once leaned.
Adopting new technology and taking advantage of changes in accounting regulations, Hahn believes, sets Baker Newman Noyes up for regional growth. “Now we’re able to do work for firms we never would have been able to do before,” Hahn says.
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