Jerry Grisko spent years helping CBIZ buy businesses. By the summer of 2026, the familiar transaction had changed direction. Grant Thornton Advisors had agreed to acquire CBIZ in a cash deal with an enterprise value of $5 billion. The executive who arrived to handle mergers and acquisitions was now guiding his own company toward becoming part of somebody else’s.
There is a pleasing circularity to that career, although the paperwork is considerably less poetic. As of October 22, the proposed transaction still awaited a shareholder vote scheduled for October 27 and the remaining closing conditions. Agreement and completion are separate events. A former corporate lawyer would appreciate the distinction.
Grisko’s story sits inside that interval. He has been CBIZ’s president since 2000 and its chief executive since 2016. His working life offers a close view of a particular ambition: assembling a national professional services business while preserving the relationships that make professional advice worth paying for.
The lawyer moves inside
Before he ran the company, Grisko practiced law. He earned a business administration degree in finance at Kent State University in 1983, followed by a law degree at Case Western Reserve University in 1987. Finance and law made a practical pairing for someone whose career would turn on the movement of businesses between owners.
He joined Baker & Hostetler in September 1987. His practice concentrated on mergers and acquisitions and general corporate law; he became a partner in January 1995. In September 1998, he crossed from advising on corporate transactions to working inside a company that pursued them, joining CBIZ as vice president of mergers and acquisitions.
The promotions came quickly. By December, his responsibilities included legal affairs as a senior vice president. In February 2000, he became president and chief operating officer. The change in titles describes a larger change in responsibility. After a deal closes, somebody has to make the combined business function. Grisko’s remit had expanded into that less ceremonial territory.
His eventual succession to Steven Gerard as chief executive was planned in advance. CBIZ announced the transition in 2014, appointed Grisko to its board in November 2015, and made him CEO in March 2016. He had already spent sixteen years as president. This was a long apprenticeship in the same institution, with time to know the machinery before taking overall charge.
What a growing firm actually sells
CBIZ’s business can sound like a catalogue of things business owners would rather delegate: accounting, tax, advisory work, benefits, insurance and technology. Its emphasis is the middle market. The attraction of combining those services is easy to understand. A company making an acquisition may also need tax advice, help with employee arrangements and a fresh look at its systems.
For Grisko, that breadth has been central to the growth argument. His background makes the sequence particularly interesting. He entered through transactions, then spent most of his CBIZ career responsible for operations. Buying another practice offers access to expertise and clients. Keeping those clients requires the expertise to remain useful after the announcement disappears from the business pages.
During a NYSE Floor Talk appearance, Grisko discussed client service, the effect of CBIZ’s new corporate headquarters on team dynamics, and competition for accounting talent. The subjects belong together. A professional services firm depends on people who can do the work, people who want to stay, and clients who recognize the value of calling them again.
That makes the office more than a real estate decision. In February 2024, Grisko welcomed Team NEO’s investor meeting to CBIZ’s headquarters and thanked the organization for its help during the relocation. His public message included appreciation for visitors touring the new space. Even in a career dominated by transactions, there are days when the business is showing people around.
The unusually plain rule
Some of Grisko’s clearest remarks about leadership came in a 2019 conversation about business ethics. He described two CBIZ values: “We do the right thing” and “We expect to win.” Taken together, they leave management with a useful obligation. Commercial ambition has to operate within boundaries that employees can recognize in everyday decisions.
“We do the right thing.”A CBIZ core value discussed by Jerry Grisko
He described anonymous ethics surveys, sharing their findings with the board, and quarterly reports on ethical concerns and responses. These were mechanisms for checking behavior, rather than relying on the reassuring appearance of a values statement. A handsome poster can have a remarkably undemanding working life.
His account emphasized the conduct of senior leaders and access to the board when concerns arose. It also connected employee retention, client work and shareholder returns. The position was practical: decisions about how people are treated affect the work they deliver. That is a consequential belief for a company regularly asking new colleagues to join an existing organization.
Marcum changes the arithmetic
On November 1, 2024, CBIZ completed its acquisition of Marcum’s non-attest business. The announcement put expected combined annualized revenue at approximately $2.8 billion. This was a substantial change in the size of the enterprise Grisko had helped build, and an immediate test of how well its operating habits could travel.
One distinction matters. Marcum’s attest business was acquired separately by CBIZ CPAs, an independent CPA firm with a longstanding administrative service agreement with CBIZ. The separate transactions prevent the simple, but misleading, impression that every part of Marcum moved into the listed company in precisely the same way.
CBIZ’s actual reported revenue for 2024 was $1.8135 billion, including only November and December of the newly acquired operations. Same-unit revenue grew 4.8% for the year. The distinction between a combined annualized estimate and a reported annual result is especially useful here. One describes the expected scale of the assembled business; the other records what happened during the calendar year.
The acquisition also meant financing and integration work. At the end of 2024, outstanding indebtedness under the new credit facilities was approximately $1.421 billion. Bigger brought additional resources and additional obligations. For Grisko, the next chapter involved making the larger organization earn the confidence expressed when the deal was signed.
Another kind of integration
By spring 2026, technology had become another visible part of that assignment. CBIZ expanded its Microsoft partnership in April, with plans to put Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry into its working environment. The announcement included AI training paths for more than 9,500 team members and systems tailored to the firm’s workflows.
“Investing in AI is investing in our people,” Grisko said. His stated aim was to make room for complex problem-solving, advice and relationship building. It was an argument about how professionals spend their time. The promised benefit depended on the tools becoming useful in daily work, alongside the judgment clients already expected.
CBIZ also expanded Peter Scavuzzo’s responsibilities to bring enterprise technology and client-facing technology capabilities under unified leadership. By July, the company reported completing an enterprise AI rollout with full employee certification and enabling more than 1,500 team members to create custom Copilot agents. Those are adoption measures; they do not, by themselves, establish the financial return on the investment.
The financial picture was mixed. First-half 2026 revenue rose 0.6% to $1.531 billion, while second-quarter revenue fell 0.2% to $682 million. Second-quarter net income declined 55.6%. The figures give the growth story useful friction. A larger platform and extensive training can coexist with a difficult quarter. Operating performance still has to be delivered.
Home remains on the map
For all the national reach of his job, Grisko’s public commitments remain closely connected to Northeast Ohio. His education took him through Kent and Cleveland. His professional career brought him into a Cleveland law firm and then CBIZ. His LinkedIn profile places him in Independence, Ohio.
In May 2026, he joined the board of the Davey Tree Expert Company, based in Kent. His other listed commitments included executive committee roles with the Greater Cleveland Partnership, Greater Cleveland Sports Commission and United Way of Greater Cleveland, plus the board of Crime Stoppers of Cuyahoga County. These connections place him in the region’s civic institutions as well as its corporate offices.
He has also credited his late father with shaping his view of leadership as a privilege and a gift. It is a revealing emphasis from an executive whose résumé is so heavily populated by transactions. The personal reference points toward responsibility for other people, an idea that acquires practical weight each time another organization joins the company.
The buyer becomes the subject
The proposed Grant Thornton transaction brings the story back to its opening reversal. Announced in July 2026, the agreement offers CBIZ shareholders $55 per share in cash. Grant Thornton Advisors plans, following closing, to separate CBIZ’s Benefits and Insurance Services segment into an independent business backed by New Mountain Capital.
For Grisko, the transaction extends a longstanding argument for broader capabilities. His public statement emphasized opportunities for employees, additional services for clients and value for shareholders. Those constituencies recur throughout his account of leadership. In a sale, their interests become immediate questions about ownership, organization and the work that follows.
As the scheduled October vote approaches, the deal remains a proposal awaiting approval and completion. Grisko’s career has already supplied the relevant experience: legal work, operating responsibility, succession and integration. The next test would involve the company he helped assemble changing hands. After twenty-eight years at CBIZ, he understands how much of a transaction happens after everyone has stopped posing for the photograph.