• Overview
  • WB Foundation
  • History
  • Affiliations

 

History

In 1957, Fred Windham, Ben Brannon, Richard Simons and Stuart Cashin left the Atlanta office of Mount & Carter, a well-established CPA firm with offices in New York, Boston and Atlanta, to start their own firm. Their expressed goal was to create an accounting firm characterized by superior client service and collegial staff relations. In the transition, more than half of Mount & Carter’s Atlanta clients moved with the team to the new firm.

Windham Brannon Simons & Cashin’s client-centric focus led to such success in its first year that Fred Windham warned his partners, “We probably cannot hope to do as well next year,” a caveat he would express each year until he retired 25 years later.

Under Managing Partner Ben Brannon’s dynamic leadership (1957-1980), the firm continued to grow through the 1960s and ‘70s. During that period, it was reorganized as Windham Brannon Cashin & Duval (1965), then Windham Brannon & Company (1980).

The firm was finally organized as Windham Brannon, PC CPAs (WBPC) in 1988. In 1993, Windham Brannon Personal Planning Services PC CPAs (WBPPS) was established to provide family wealth management, counseling and planning. John Edgar serves as President of WBPPS.  In 2000, the firm founded Windham Brannon Financial Group, Inc. (WBFG) under the leadership of Jim Heard to provide objective, independent investment strategies and advisement.

Successive Managing Partners of WBPC, Stuart Cashin (1980-1986), Charles Doggett (1986-1991), William J. Bomar (1991-1996), Charles L. McGimsey (1996-2011) and David H. Kloess (2011-Present) have continued to build on the vision of the firm’s founding partners: going beyond the expectations of other firms to listen to and understand clients’ needs and wants, to provide critical planning by a professional staff with varied and proven expertise, so clients are successful in reaching their goals.

Over the years, Windham Brannon has been honored with many awards. We have been recognized as one of America’s “Top 25” accounting firms by Inside Public Accounting magazine, and one of the “Best Places to Work” by the Atlanta Business Chronicle and Accounting Today magazine. Our peers have recognized our quality: locally, with the prestigious Distinguished Member Award three times from the Georgia Society of CPAs; nationally, with the highest quality rating each year since 1977 in peer reviews by a leading national accounting firm. Most importantly, our service is validated by our client relationships, many of which have extended for decades, some throughout our entire 50-plus year history.