History

From Paardekooper & Hoffman to Mazars in the Netherlands

The basis for the company was laid in 1927 by Jan Paardekooper, in the Rotterdam Scheepvaartkwartier. During the first decades, the audit firm worked for many large clients in the immediate vicinity of the port: shipping companies, shippers, freight forwarders, ship builders, banks and insurance companies. In 1941 Mr. Hoffman joined and the company continued under the name Paardekooper & Hoffman.

In the fifties, the first office outside Rotterdam was opened in The Hague. Through mergers with other offices a national network was gradually built up, with offices in particular in Amsterdam, Breda, Haarlem and Roosendaal.

At the end of the seventies Paardekooper & Hoffman added a new line of business: tax consultancy. Legal services were integrated as a new department in 1997.

Dutch entrepreneurs have been faced with an avalanche of changes in the years since then: the ICT revolution, the opening of borders, the introduction of the euro and increasing competitive pressure. To optimise its international service, Paardekooper & Hoffman merged in 2000 with Mazars, a European organisation of accountants and tax consultants.

From February 2003 Mazars Paardekooper Hoffman has been abbreviated to Mazars.

Mazars Group: Rouen, Paris, Worldwide

Mazars was founded in 1940 by Robert Mazars. Because of the war, he was forced to break off his business administration studies. To earn money, he started out in theworld of accountancy.

Within a year his office in Rouen had already grown sufficiently that he could take on young accountants. The office grew and developed rapidly and received more and more orders from large corporate organisations in Paris. In 1973 the first office was opened in Paris. The reputation of the firm grew and more and more major organisations and also government departments outsourced their accountancy work to Mazars.

At the age of 63 Robert Mazars retired as president of the firm. He and the other partners chose Patrick de Cambourg (now also the current Chairman of Mazars) as his successor.