Arthur Andersen
Encyclopedia
Arthur Andersen LLP, based in Chicago
, was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms
among PricewaterhouseCoopers
, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
, Ernst & Young
and KPMG
, providing auditing, tax
, and consulting
services to large corporation
s. In 2002, the firm voluntarily surrendered its licenses to practice as Certified Public Accountant
s in the United States
after being found guilty of criminal charges relating to the firm's handling of the audit
ing of Enron
, an energy corporation based in Texas
which had filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and later failed. The other national accounting and consulting firms bought most of the practices of Arthur Andersen. The verdict was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States
. However, the damage to its reputation has prevented it from returning as a viable business, though it still nominally exists.
One of the few revenue-generating assets that the Andersen firm still has is Q Center, a conference and training facility outside of Chicago.
The former consultancy arm of the firm, now known as Accenture
, which had split from the accountancy side in 1987 and renamed themselves after splitting from Andersen Worldwide
in 2000, continues to operate and has become one of the largest multinational corporations in the world.
Orphaned at the age of 16, Andersen began working as a mailboy by day and attended school at night, eventually being hired as the assistant to the controller
of Allis-Chalmers
in Chicago. At 23, he became the youngest CPA in Illinois.
The firm of Arthur Andersen was founded in 1913 by Arthur Andersen and Clarence DeLany as Andersen, DeLany & Co. The firm changed its name to Arthur Andersen & Co. in 1918. Arthur Andersen's first client was the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company
of Milwaukee. In 1915, due to his many contacts there, the Milwaukee office was opened as the firm's second office. In 1917, after attending courses at night while working full time, he graduated from the Kellogg School
at Northwestern University
with a bachelor's degree in business.
Andersen had an unwavering faith in education as the basis upon which the new profession of accounting should be developed. He created the profession's first centralized training program and believed in training during normal working hours. He was generous in his commitment to aiding educational, civic and charitable organizations. In 1927, he was elected to the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University and served as its president from 1930 to 1932. He was also chairman of the board of certified public accountant examiners of Illinois.
Arthur Andersen audited major corporations in the US in the early 1960s, such as Louis Lesser Enterprises, Inc..
Andersen also led the way in a number of areas of accounting standards. Being among the first to identify a possible sub-prime bust, Andersen dissociated itself from a number of clients in the 1970s. Later, with the emergence of stock options as a form of compensation, Andersen was the first of the major accountancy firms to propose to the FASB that stock options should be included on expense
reports, thus impacting on net profit just as cash compensation would.
By the 1980s, standards throughout the industry fell as accountancy firms struggled to balance their commitment to audit independence against the desire to grow their burgeoning consultancy practices. Having established a reputation for IT consultancy in the 1980s, Andersen was no exception. The firm rapidly expanded its consultancy practice to the point where the bulk of its revenues were derived from such engagements, while audit partners were continually encouraged to seek out opportunities for consulting fees from existing audit clients. By the late-1990s, Andersen had succeeded in tripling the per-share revenues of its partners.
Predictably, Andersen struggled to balance the need to maintain its faithfulness to accounting standards with its clients' desire to maximize profits, particularly in the era of quarterly earnings reports. Andersen has been alleged to have been involved in the fraudulent accounting and auditing of Sunbeam Products
, Waste Management, Inc., Asia Pulp & Paper
, and the Baptist Foundation of Arizona
, WorldCom, as well as the infamous Enron
case, among others.
Two of the last three Comptrollers General of the US General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) were top executives of Arthur Andersen.
In 1989, Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting became separate units of Andersen Worldwide Société Coopérative
. Arthur Andersen increased its use of accounting services as a springboard to sign up clients for Andersen Consulting's more lucrative business.
The two businesses spent most of the 1990s in a bitter dispute. Andersen Consulting saw a huge surge in profits during the decade. However, the consultants continued to resent transfer payments they were required to make to Arthur Andersen. In August 2000, at the conclusion of International Chamber of Commerce
arbitration of the dispute, the arbitrators granted Andersen Consulting its independence from Arthur Andersen, but awarded the US$
1.2 billion in past payments (held in escrow
pending the ruling) to Arthur Andersen, and declared that Andersen Consulting could no longer use the Andersen name. As a result Andersen Consulting changed its name to Accenture
on New Year's Day
2001 and Arthur Andersen meanwhile now having the right to the Andersen Consulting name rebranded itself as "Andersen".
Perhaps most telling about who won the decision was that four hours after the arbitrator made his ruling, Arthur Andersen CEO Jim Wadia
suddenly resigned. Industry analysts and business school professors alike viewed the event as a complete victory for Andersen Consulting. Jim Wadia would provide insight on his resignation years later at a Harvard Business school case activity about the split. It turned out that the Arthur Andersen board passed a resolution saying he had to resign if he didn't get at least an incremental US$4 billion (either through negotiation or via the arbitrator decision) for the consulting practice to split off, hence his quick resignation once the decision was announced.
Accounts vary on why the split occurred — executives on both sides of the split cite greed and arrogance on the part of the other side, and executives on the Andersen Consulting side maintained breach of contract when Arthur Andersen created a second consulting group, AABC (Arthur Andersen Business Consulting) which began to compete directly with Andersen Consulting in the marketplace. Many of the AABC firms were bought out by other consulting companies in 2002, most notably, Deloitte (especially in Europe), Hitachi Consulting
, PwC Consulting, which was later acquired by IBM, and KPMG Consulting, which later changed its name to BearingPoint
.
was broken up after revelations of Andersen's performance as an auditor. The Powers Committee (appointed by Enron's board to look into the firm's accounting in October 2001) came to the following assessment: "The evidence available to us suggests that Andersen did not fulfill its professional responsibilities in connection with its audits of Enron’s financial statements, or its obligation to bring to the attention of Enron’s Board (or the Audit and Compliance Committee) concerns about Enron’s internal contracts over the related-party transactions".
On June 15, 2002, Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice
for shredding documents related to its audit of Enron
, resulting in the Enron scandal
. Nancy Temple
(Andersen Legal Dept.) and David Duncan (Lead Partner for the Enron account) were cited as the responsible managers in this scandal as they had given the order to shred relevant documents. Since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not allow convicted felons to audit public companies, the firm agreed to surrender its CPA licenses and its right to practice before the SEC on August 31, 2002 - effectively putting the firm out of business. It had already started winding down its American operations after the indictment, and many of its accountants joined other firms. The firm sold most of its American operations to KPMG
, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young
and Grant Thornton LLP. The damage to Andersen's reputation also destroyed the viability of the firm's international practices. Most of them were taken over by the local firms of the other major international accounting firms.
The Andersen indictment also put a spotlight on its faulty audits of other companies, most notably Waste Management
, Sunbeam
, the Baptist Foundation of Arizona
and WorldCom. The subsequent bankruptcy
of WorldCom, which quickly surpassed Enron as the then biggest bankruptcy in history (the record is now held by Lehman Brothers
and Washington Mutual
) led to a domino effect
of accounting and like corporate scandals that continue to tarnish American business practices.
On May 31, 2005, in the case Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States
, the Supreme Court of the United States
unanimously reversed Andersen's conviction due to what it saw as serious flaws in the jury instructions
. In the court's view, the instructions were far too vague to allow a jury to find obstruction of justice had really occurred. The court found that the instructions were worded in such a way that Andersen could have been convicted without any proof that the firm knew it had broken the law or that there had been a link to any official proceeding that prohibited the destruction of documents. The opinion, written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist
, was also highly skeptical of the government's concept of "corrupt persuasion"—persuading someone to engage in an act with an improper purpose even without knowing an act is unlawful.
From a high of 28,000 employees in the US and 85,000 worldwide, the firm is now down to around 200 based primarily in Chicago. Most of their attention is on handling the lawsuits and presiding over the orderly dissolution of the company.
, Arthur Andersen LLP has not been formally dissolved nor has it declared bankruptcy. Ownership of the partnership has been ceded to four limited liability corporations named Omega Management I through IV. As of 2011, Arthur Andersen LLP still operates the Q Center conference center in St. Charles, nowadays mostly used for Accenture trainings.
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms
Big Four auditors
The Big Four are the four largest international professional services networks in accountancy and professional services, which handle the vast majority of audits for publicly traded companies as well as many private companies, creating an oligopoly in auditing large companies...
among PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers is a global professional services firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest professional services firm measured by revenues and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms....
, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited , commonly referred to as Deloitte, is one of the Big Four accountancy firms along with PricewaterhouseCoopers , Ernst & Young, and KPMG....
, Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
and KPMG
KPMG
KPMG is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PwC. Its global headquarters is located in Amstelveen, Netherlands....
, providing auditing, tax
Tax
To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
, and consulting
Consultant
A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...
services to large corporation
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
s. In 2002, the firm voluntarily surrendered its licenses to practice as Certified Public Accountant
Certified Public Accountant
Certified Public Accountant is the statutory title of qualified accountants in the United States who have passed the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination and have met additional state education and experience requirements for certification as a CPA...
s in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
after being found guilty of criminal charges relating to the firm's handling of the audit
Audit
The general definition of an audit is an evaluation of a person, organization, system, process, enterprise, project or product. The term most commonly refers to audits in accounting, but similar concepts also exist in project management, quality management, and energy conservation.- Accounting...
ing of Enron
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with...
, an energy corporation based in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
which had filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and later failed. The other national accounting and consulting firms bought most of the practices of Arthur Andersen. The verdict was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
. However, the damage to its reputation has prevented it from returning as a viable business, though it still nominally exists.
One of the few revenue-generating assets that the Andersen firm still has is Q Center, a conference and training facility outside of Chicago.
The former consultancy arm of the firm, now known as Accenture
Accenture
Accenture plc is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the largest consulting firm in the world and is a Fortune Global 500 company. As of September 2011, the company had more than 236,000 employees across...
, which had split from the accountancy side in 1987 and renamed themselves after splitting from Andersen Worldwide
Andersen Worldwide
Andersen Worldwide Société Coopérative was a Swiss-based entity which managed the global offices of accounting firm Arthur Andersen. It was also the parent corporation of Andersen Consulting before its split in 2000....
in 2000, continues to operate and has become one of the largest multinational corporations in the world.
Founding
Comptroller
A comptroller is a management level position responsible for supervising the quality of accounting and financial reporting of an organization.In British government, the Comptroller General or Comptroller and Auditor General is in most countries the external auditor of the budget execution of the...
of Allis-Chalmers
Allis-Chalmers
The Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. of West Allis, Wisconsin, is an American company known for its past as a manufacturer with diverse interests, perhaps most famous for their bright Persian Orange farm tractors...
in Chicago. At 23, he became the youngest CPA in Illinois.
The firm of Arthur Andersen was founded in 1913 by Arthur Andersen and Clarence DeLany as Andersen, DeLany & Co. The firm changed its name to Arthur Andersen & Co. in 1918. Arthur Andersen's first client was the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company
Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company
The Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company was an American brewery based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was once the largest producer of beer in the world. Its namesake beer, Schlitz, was known as "The beer that made Milwaukee famous" and was famously advertised with the slogan "When you're out of Schlitz,...
of Milwaukee. In 1915, due to his many contacts there, the Milwaukee office was opened as the firm's second office. In 1917, after attending courses at night while working full time, he graduated from the Kellogg School
Kellogg School
Kellogg School may refer to:* Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University* Kellogg School of Science and Technology at The Scripps Research Institute* Kellogg College, Oxford, one of the constituent colleges of Oxford University...
at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
with a bachelor's degree in business.
Andersen had an unwavering faith in education as the basis upon which the new profession of accounting should be developed. He created the profession's first centralized training program and believed in training during normal working hours. He was generous in his commitment to aiding educational, civic and charitable organizations. In 1927, he was elected to the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University and served as its president from 1930 to 1932. He was also chairman of the board of certified public accountant examiners of Illinois.
Reputation
Andersen, who headed the firm until his death in 1947, was a zealous supporter of high standards in the accounting industry. A stickler for honesty, he argued that accountants' responsibility was to investors, not their clients' management. During the early years, it is reputed that Andersen was approached by an executive from a local rail utility to sign off on accounts containing flawed accounting, or else face the loss of a major client. Andersen refused in no uncertain terms, replying that there was "not enough money in the city of Chicago" to make him do it. Leonard Spacek, who succeeded Andersen at the founder's death, continued this emphasis on honesty. For many years, Andersen's motto was "Think straight, talk straight."Arthur Andersen audited major corporations in the US in the early 1960s, such as Louis Lesser Enterprises, Inc..
Andersen also led the way in a number of areas of accounting standards. Being among the first to identify a possible sub-prime bust, Andersen dissociated itself from a number of clients in the 1970s. Later, with the emergence of stock options as a form of compensation, Andersen was the first of the major accountancy firms to propose to the FASB that stock options should be included on expense
Expense
In common usage, an expense or expenditure is an outflow of money to another person or group to pay for an item or service, or for a category of costs. For a tenant, rent is an expense. For students or parents, tuition is an expense. Buying food, clothing, furniture or an automobile is often...
reports, thus impacting on net profit just as cash compensation would.
By the 1980s, standards throughout the industry fell as accountancy firms struggled to balance their commitment to audit independence against the desire to grow their burgeoning consultancy practices. Having established a reputation for IT consultancy in the 1980s, Andersen was no exception. The firm rapidly expanded its consultancy practice to the point where the bulk of its revenues were derived from such engagements, while audit partners were continually encouraged to seek out opportunities for consulting fees from existing audit clients. By the late-1990s, Andersen had succeeded in tripling the per-share revenues of its partners.
Predictably, Andersen struggled to balance the need to maintain its faithfulness to accounting standards with its clients' desire to maximize profits, particularly in the era of quarterly earnings reports. Andersen has been alleged to have been involved in the fraudulent accounting and auditing of Sunbeam Products
Sunbeam Products
Sunbeam Products is an American brand that has produced electric home appliances since 1910. Their products have included the Mixmaster mixer, the Sunbeam CG waffle iron, Coffeemaster and the fully automatic T20 toaster. Sunbeam is owned by Jarden Consumer Solutions after Jarden's acquisition in...
, Waste Management, Inc., Asia Pulp & Paper
Asia Pulp & Paper
Asia Pulp & Paper, also known in the paper industry as APP is based in Singapore, is one of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world. It was founded by Eka Cipta Widjaja, who had significant ties to the Suharto ruling family in Indonesia. APP claims to obtain 80-90% of the fiber for...
, and the Baptist Foundation of Arizona
Baptist Foundation of Arizona
The Baptist Foundation of Arizona was a Southern Baptist charity whose fraudulent behavior led to the largest collapse of a religious financial institution in U.S. history. The BFA was associated with the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention, which was affiliated with the national organization...
, WorldCom, as well as the infamous Enron
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with...
case, among others.
Two of the last three Comptrollers General of the US General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) were top executives of Arthur Andersen.
Andersen Consulting and Accenture
The consulting wing of the firm became increasingly important during the 1970s and 1980s, growing at a much faster rate than the more established accounting, auditing, and tax practice. This disproportionate growth, and the consulting division partners' belief that they were not garnering their fair share of firm profits, created increasing friction between the two divisions.In 1989, Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting became separate units of Andersen Worldwide Société Coopérative
Andersen Worldwide Société Coopérative
The Andersen Worldwide Organisation is a Swiss entity, Andersen Worldwide Société Coopérative , acting as an “umbrella” for the AWO member firms. Every member firm and its practice partners enter into a Member Firm Interface Agreement with AWSC, substantially in the form of a standard version...
. Arthur Andersen increased its use of accounting services as a springboard to sign up clients for Andersen Consulting's more lucrative business.
The two businesses spent most of the 1990s in a bitter dispute. Andersen Consulting saw a huge surge in profits during the decade. However, the consultants continued to resent transfer payments they were required to make to Arthur Andersen. In August 2000, at the conclusion of International Chamber of Commerce
International Chamber of Commerce
The International Chamber of Commerce is the largest, most representative business organization in the world. Its hundreds of thousands of member companies in over 130 countries have interests spanning every sector of private enterprise....
arbitration of the dispute, the arbitrators granted Andersen Consulting its independence from Arthur Andersen, but awarded the US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
1.2 billion in past payments (held in escrow
Escrow
An escrow is:* an arrangement made under contractual provisions between transacting parties, whereby an independent trusted third party receives and disburses money and/or documents for the transacting parties, with the timing of such disbursement by the third party dependent on the fulfillment of...
pending the ruling) to Arthur Andersen, and declared that Andersen Consulting could no longer use the Andersen name. As a result Andersen Consulting changed its name to Accenture
Accenture
Accenture plc is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the largest consulting firm in the world and is a Fortune Global 500 company. As of September 2011, the company had more than 236,000 employees across...
on New Year's Day
New Year's Day
New Year's Day is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar used in ancient Rome...
2001 and Arthur Andersen meanwhile now having the right to the Andersen Consulting name rebranded itself as "Andersen".
Perhaps most telling about who won the decision was that four hours after the arbitrator made his ruling, Arthur Andersen CEO Jim Wadia
Jim Wadia
Jamshed "Jim" Wadia was a CEO of Arthur Andersen in August 1997, a post from which he resigned on August 7, 2000 due to his inability to favorably steer the then impending spinning off of Andersen Consulting, now known as Accenture, one of the largest consulting firms in the world at the time.-...
suddenly resigned. Industry analysts and business school professors alike viewed the event as a complete victory for Andersen Consulting. Jim Wadia would provide insight on his resignation years later at a Harvard Business school case activity about the split. It turned out that the Arthur Andersen board passed a resolution saying he had to resign if he didn't get at least an incremental US$4 billion (either through negotiation or via the arbitrator decision) for the consulting practice to split off, hence his quick resignation once the decision was announced.
Accounts vary on why the split occurred — executives on both sides of the split cite greed and arrogance on the part of the other side, and executives on the Andersen Consulting side maintained breach of contract when Arthur Andersen created a second consulting group, AABC (Arthur Andersen Business Consulting) which began to compete directly with Andersen Consulting in the marketplace. Many of the AABC firms were bought out by other consulting companies in 2002, most notably, Deloitte (especially in Europe), Hitachi Consulting
Hitachi Consulting
Hitachi Consulting is an international management and technology consulting firm with headquarters in Dallas, Texas. It was founded in November 2000 as subsidiary of the Japanese Hitachi Limited Group and currently employs approximately 4,000 people in the U.S., Japan, the UK, Spain, Portugal,...
, PwC Consulting, which was later acquired by IBM, and KPMG Consulting, which later changed its name to BearingPoint
BearingPoint
BearingPoint is an independent management and technology consulting firm. Following a post-bankruptcy management buyout in August 2009, BearingPoint has been operated by its European management team and is organized as a partnership...
.
Enron scandal
Energy company EnronEnron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with...
was broken up after revelations of Andersen's performance as an auditor. The Powers Committee (appointed by Enron's board to look into the firm's accounting in October 2001) came to the following assessment: "The evidence available to us suggests that Andersen did not fulfill its professional responsibilities in connection with its audits of Enron’s financial statements, or its obligation to bring to the attention of Enron’s Board (or the Audit and Compliance Committee) concerns about Enron’s internal contracts over the related-party transactions".
On June 15, 2002, Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice
Obstruction of justice
The crime of obstruction of justice, in United States jurisdictions, refers to the crime of interfering with the work of police, investigators, regulatory agencies, prosecutors, or other officials...
for shredding documents related to its audit of Enron
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with...
, resulting in the Enron scandal
Enron scandal
The Enron scandal, revealed in October 2001, eventually led to the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas, and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, which was one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world...
. Nancy Temple
Nancy Temple
Nancy Anne Temple was an in-house attorney for Arthur Andersen who advised Michael Odom and David B. Duncan about Arthur Andersen policies regarding retention of documents from client engagements. Duncan oversaw the shredding of Arthur Andersen documents concerning their work for client Enron,...
(Andersen Legal Dept.) and David Duncan (Lead Partner for the Enron account) were cited as the responsible managers in this scandal as they had given the order to shred relevant documents. Since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not allow convicted felons to audit public companies, the firm agreed to surrender its CPA licenses and its right to practice before the SEC on August 31, 2002 - effectively putting the firm out of business. It had already started winding down its American operations after the indictment, and many of its accountants joined other firms. The firm sold most of its American operations to KPMG
KPMG
KPMG is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PwC. Its global headquarters is located in Amstelveen, Netherlands....
, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
and Grant Thornton LLP. The damage to Andersen's reputation also destroyed the viability of the firm's international practices. Most of them were taken over by the local firms of the other major international accounting firms.
The Andersen indictment also put a spotlight on its faulty audits of other companies, most notably Waste Management
Waste Management, Inc
Waste Management, Inc. is a waste management, comprehensive waste, and environmental services company in North America. Founded in 1894, the company is headquartered in Suite 4000 at the First City Tower in Downtown Houston, Texas, in the United States....
, Sunbeam
Sunbeam Products
Sunbeam Products is an American brand that has produced electric home appliances since 1910. Their products have included the Mixmaster mixer, the Sunbeam CG waffle iron, Coffeemaster and the fully automatic T20 toaster. Sunbeam is owned by Jarden Consumer Solutions after Jarden's acquisition in...
, the Baptist Foundation of Arizona
Baptist Foundation of Arizona
The Baptist Foundation of Arizona was a Southern Baptist charity whose fraudulent behavior led to the largest collapse of a religious financial institution in U.S. history. The BFA was associated with the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention, which was affiliated with the national organization...
and WorldCom. The subsequent bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
of WorldCom, which quickly surpassed Enron as the then biggest bankruptcy in history (the record is now held by Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial services firm. Before declaring bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth largest investment bank in the USA , doing business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales and trading Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (former NYSE ticker...
and Washington Mutual
Washington Mutual
Washington Mutual, Inc. , abbreviated to WaMu, was a savings bank holding company and the former owner of Washington Mutual Bank, which was the United States' largest savings and loan association until its collapse in 2008....
) led to a domino effect
Domino effect
The domino effect is a chain reaction that occurs when a small change causes a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence. The term is best known as a mechanical effect, and is used as an analogy to a falling row of dominoes...
of accounting and like corporate scandals that continue to tarnish American business practices.
On May 31, 2005, in the case Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States
Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States
Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, 544 U.S. 696 was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously overturned accounting firm Arthur Andersen's conviction of obstruction of justice on the basis that the jury instructions did not properly portray the law Andersen was charged...
, the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
unanimously reversed Andersen's conviction due to what it saw as serious flaws in the jury instructions
Jury instructions
Jury instructions are the set of legal rules that jurors should follow when the jury is deciding a civil or criminal case. Jury instructions are given to the jury by the jury instructor, who usually reads them aloud to the jury...
. In the court's view, the instructions were far too vague to allow a jury to find obstruction of justice had really occurred. The court found that the instructions were worded in such a way that Andersen could have been convicted without any proof that the firm knew it had broken the law or that there had been a link to any official proceeding that prohibited the destruction of documents. The opinion, written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist
William Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer, jurist, and political figure who served as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States and later as the 16th Chief Justice of the United States...
, was also highly skeptical of the government's concept of "corrupt persuasion"—persuading someone to engage in an act with an improper purpose even without knowing an act is unlawful.
Demise
Since the ruling vacated Andersen's felony conviction, it theoretically left Andersen free to resume operations. However, the damage to the Andersen name was so severe that it has not returned as a viable business even on a limited scale. There are over 100 civil suits pending against the firm related to its audits of Enron and other companies. In addition, its reputation was so badly tarnished that no company wanted Andersen's name on an audit. Even before voluntarily surrendering its right to practice before the SEC, it had many of its state licenses revoked. A new verb, "Enroned" was coined by John M. Cunningham, the former Arthur Andersen Director in the Seattle Office, to describe the demise of Arthur Andersen.From a high of 28,000 employees in the US and 85,000 worldwide, the firm is now down to around 200 based primarily in Chicago. Most of their attention is on handling the lawsuits and presiding over the orderly dissolution of the company.
, Arthur Andersen LLP has not been formally dissolved nor has it declared bankruptcy. Ownership of the partnership has been ceded to four limited liability corporations named Omega Management I through IV. As of 2011, Arthur Andersen LLP still operates the Q Center conference center in St. Charles, nowadays mostly used for Accenture trainings.
Migration of partners and local offices to new firms
Many partners formed new companies or were acquired by other consulting firms. Examples include:- Huron ConsultingHuron Consulting GroupThe Huron Consulting Group , founded in 2002, is a global management consulting company offering services in the Healthcare, Education, Law, and Finance industries...
- KPMGKPMGKPMG is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PwC. Its global headquarters is located in Amstelveen, Netherlands....
which absorbed the Computer Forensics division based in Cypress, CA - Perot SystemsPerot SystemsPerot Systems was an information technology services provider founded in 1988 by a group of investors led by Ross Perot and based in Plano, Texas, United States. A Fortune 1000 corporation with offices in more than 25 countries, Perot Systems employed more than 23,000 people and had an annual...
which absorbed six partners in the East - ProtivitiProtivitiProtiviti is a global consulting and internal audit firm specializing in risk and advisory services. Protiviti’s customers are in the areas of finance, operations, technology, litigation, and governance, risk and compliance. Protiviti has offices in 61 major markets, with 33 in the United States...
hired approximately 800 former workers - SMART Business Advisory and ConsultingSMART Business Advisory and ConsultingSMART Business Advisory and Consulting, LLC was a consulting company that served clients throughout the U.S. and globally. SMART was headquartered in Devon, Pennsylvania with locations in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and internationally in London...
which absorbed some of the Philadelphia office - West Monroe Partners
- WTASWTASWTAS LLC, founded in 2002 by 25 former public accounting firm partners, is one of the largest independent tax firms in the United States, providing a wide range of tax, valuation, financial advisory and related consulting services to individual and corporate clients across the country...
which was started in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Washington D.C. and West Palm Beach and later expanded to 8 other locations
See also
- AccentureAccentureAccenture plc is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the largest consulting firm in the world and is a Fortune Global 500 company. As of September 2011, the company had more than 236,000 employees across...
- Accounting scandalsAccounting scandalsAccounting scandals, or corporate accounting scandals, are political and business scandals which arise with the disclosure of misdeeds by trusted executives of large public corporations...
- Arthur Andersen LLP v. United StatesArthur Andersen LLP v. United StatesArthur Andersen LLP v. United States, 544 U.S. 696 was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously overturned accounting firm Arthur Andersen's conviction of obstruction of justice on the basis that the jury instructions did not properly portray the law Andersen was charged...
- Conspiracy of FoolsConspiracy of FoolsConspiracy of Fools is a book by Kurt Eichenwald detailing the Enron scandal. It was published in 2005 when Eichenwald was a business journalist with The New York Times.- Synopsis :...
- Corporate abuse
- David J. LesarDavid J. LesarDavid J. Lesar, is Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton Energy Services. Trained as a Certified Public Accountant, Lesar spent 16 years at Arthur Andersen. He had spent most of his career at Andersen, where he worked on their Halliburton account. In 1995, Lesar was hired...
- List of notable business failures
- Timeline of the Enron scandalTimeline of the Enron scandal-1985:Kenneth Lay seized control in 1985 of HNG/Internorth created by the merger of Houston Natural Gas and the much larger and more diversified InterNorth, which combined four natural gas pipeline companies, Northern Natural Gas, Transwestern Pipeline, Florida Gas Transmission, and Houston...