Who manages cap tables, equity administration and 409A valuations?
Cap Table, Equity and 409A: What The Shortlist Report Finds
10 firms lead, appearing in 12.3–17.9% of 235 AI responses. The sample cannot separate them, so we do not pretend it can.
No clear leader
No single firm dominates this question. Ten come up regularly and they specialise in different things, so the firm worth calling is the one that fits your situation rather than whoever sits highest.
Armanino42 of 235
Outsourced accounting, controller, CFO, FP&A, and ERP services for mid-market and growth companies.
KPMG38 of 235
Provides full finance managed services, M&A advisory, financial diligence, and transaction support for mid-market and enterprise clients.
Deloitte37 of 235
Offers full finance-function outsourcing, automation, controllership, and transformation for mid-market and enterprise clients.
PwC36 of 235
Provides finance transformation, accounting operations, vendor financial due diligence, and CFO services for mid-market enterprises and private-equity-backed businesses.
Eton35 of 235
+5 more, tiedin the table
Based on 235 ChatGPT responses to this question, collected August 11, 2026–October 1, 2026. Firms are counted once per response. How we measure.
The ranking
| Firm | Responses | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 10 firms, 12.3–17.9% | |||
| Armaninoarmanino.comOutsourced accounting, controller, CFO, FP&A, and ERP services for mid-market and growth companies. | 42 of 235 | 17.9% | |
| KPMGkpmg.comProvides full finance managed services, M&A advisory, financial diligence, and transaction support for mid-market and enterprise clients. | 38 of 235 | 16.2% | |
| Deloittedeloitte.comOffers full finance-function outsourcing, automation, controllership, and transformation for mid-market and enterprise clients. | 37 of 235 | 15.7% | |
| PwCProvides finance transformation, accounting operations, vendor financial due diligence, and CFO services for mid-market enterprises and private-equity-backed businesses. | 36 of 235 | 15.3% | |
| Eton | 35 of 235 | 14.9% | |
| EYProvides finance transformation, accounting operations, and full-cycle consolidation with multi-GAAP reporting for larger companies and complex structures. | 34 of 235 | 14.5% | |
| Krollkroll.comProvides sell-side transaction advisory including quality of earnings, working capital analysis, and operational due diligence. | 34 of 235 | 14.5% | |
| Morgan Stanleymorganstanley.comProvides 409A valuation services for growth and late-stage companies with technology and life sciences experience. | 34 of 235 | 14.5% | |
| Arancaaranca.comProvides valuation and advisory services, including private-company and 409A valuations. | 32 of 235 | 13.6% | |
| Stoutstout.comProvides business valuation and 409A work for growth-stage and complex private companies. | 29 of 235 | 12.3% | |
Key findings
- No firm answers “Who manages cap tables, equity administration and 409A valuations?” reliably in ChatGPT. The most-named, Armanino, appeared in 42 of 235 responses (17.9%) collected August 11, 2026–October 1, 2026, and 9 other firms scored close enough that the sample cannot put any of them in order.
- Armanino, KPMG and Deloitte were named most often, in 37–42 of 235 responses. All 10 firms in the leading group are listed with their counts in the table below.
- 10 firms cleared the reporting threshold on “Who manages cap tables, equity administration and 409A valuations?” in ChatGPT as of October 1, 2026; the full table with response counts is below.
- Deloitte appears in 6 of the 14 fractional CFO and outsourced accounting firms reports published by The Shortlist Report, the widest coverage of any firm named on this page.
- No firm paid to appear in this ranking; placement cannot be bought, and the counts come from ChatGPT responses rather than from submissions.
Why the tiers fall where they do
Tier 1 holds Armanino, KPMG, Deloitte, PwC, Eton, EY, Kroll, Morgan Stanley, Aranca and Stout, named in 29 to 42 of the 235 ChatGPT responses. They are grouped rather than ranked because the gaps between them are inside the margin of error at this sample size — one extra mention would reorder them, so an order would be reporting noise as a finding.
The test is McNemar’s at 95%, applied against the same 235 responses for every firm. The full reasoning, and what happened when we ranked one-to-N instead.
What the sample shows
10 firms lead this question: Armanino, KPMG, Deloitte, PwC, Eton, EY, Kroll, Morgan Stanley, Aranca and Stout. They appear in 12.3–17.9% of the 235 responses. The gaps between them are inside the margin of error at this sample size, so they are listed together rather than ranked against each other.
82 firms were named at least once across the sample. 10 of them cleared the threshold of 2 responses and appear above; the rest were named once and are inside the noise.
How to read this
Firms are grouped into tiers, not ranked one to fifteen. A tier holds every firm whose 95% confidence interval overlaps the leader's, which is a long way of saying the sample cannot tell them apart. Order within a tier is arbitrary — read the counts, not the position.
Share is the percentage of responses that named the firm — not a quality score. A firm scoring low here may be excellent and simply under-written about online, which is a finding about its visibility rather than its work.
The same question was asked repeatedly because AI assistants do not answer identically twice. A single response would tell you almost nothing.
What this measurement does not tell you
- It is not a quality ranking. Share reflects how much has been written about a firm online, which is what an AI assistant reads. A capable firm nobody writes about scores low here.
- It is a reading from a date range, not a permanent standing. This sample was collected August 11, 2026–October 1, 2026; models change and so do their answers.
- It covers ChatGPT only. Other assistants answer differently, and we do not extrapolate across engines we have not measured.
- Order within a tier is arbitrary. Read the counts, not the position. Why we use tiers.
Cite this report
The Shortlist Report. (2026). Cap Table, Equity and 409A: What The Shortlist Report Finds. The Shortlist Report. https://www.shortlistreport.com/article/cap-table-and-valuation-advisors
Underlying counts: CSV · JSON. Every answer they were counted from: plain text · JSON. All reusable under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.