Does the accounting firm of Arthur Anerson still exist

[serryjw]

or was it completely destroyed because of Enron?

[NanceGreggs]

1. Gone. Totally.

[PVK]

2. Reinvented as "Accenture". Same people, different name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andersen_Consulting

[DBoon]

6. No, that's the management consulting arm

Management consultants and accountants come from different worlds. The business models and cultures are incompatible.

Anderson was the first big CPA firm to recognize this and spun off Anderson Consulting. Anderson Consulting changed their name fortuitously right before Arthur Anderson fell into disrepute. They had no connection except common ancestry with the accounting firm at the time Enron hit.

A fellow named Mark Stevens wrote a book "The Big Eight" describing the cultural cold war that existed between consultants and accountants. I worked for these firms so I am very personally familiar with this.

[jody]

9. I don't agree that management consultants and accountants are from

different worlds. Bookkeeping perhaps but not accounting as taught in the best schools.

[DBoon]

11. I worked there. It was a state of cold war.

I speak from personal experience.

[jody]

12. OK but you made a blanket assertion that does not apply to all management

consultants/accountants.

[DBoon]

13. read the Mark Stevens book

this antagonism was endemic throughout the Big CPA firms

[jody]

14. Thanks but a book won't change my opinion.

Have a nice evening. :hi:

[Dunvegan]

3. Arthur Andersen es Kaput.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen

[PVK]

4. Was Andersen Consulting. Became Accenture in 2001. See above.

Accenture is NOW in the business of "counting" our votes.

[OneMoreThyme]

7. I thought they were two different divisions

It broke into two different divisions when it was Arthur Andersen.

Andersen Consulting is the IT side isn't it?

from WIki

Arthur Andersen realized, before the rest of the Big Five, that business consulting was a very lucrative business. The consulting wing of the company became increasingly important during the 1970s and 1980s, and friction grew between the accounting side and consulting side of the business.

In 1989, Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting became separate units of Andersen Worldwide. Andersen increased its use of accounting services as a springboard to sign up clients for Andersen Consulting's more lucrative business.

The two 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 believe they were being underpaid. In 2000 an international arbitrator granted Andersen Consulting its independence.

As a result of that split, Andersen Consulting changed its name to Accenture on New Year's Day 2001. Accenture agreed to pay $1.2 billion in past payments to the accounting firm.

---

Arthur Andersen LLP, based in Chicago, Illinois, was the largest of the Big Five accounting firms and performed auditing, tax services, and consulting. In 2002 the firm voluntarily surrendered its Certified Public Accounting firm licenses in the U.S. as a result of prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice from the Enron scandal.

One of the few revenue-generating assets that Andersen still has is The Q Center, a conference and training facility outside of Chicago.

[PSPS]

5. No, the crooks are still there.

They just changed the name to escape their criminal past -- kind of like "Jet Blue", or bush's mysteriously reissued Texas DL number.

[Igel]

8. The accounting firm does still exist;

it's primary activity is liquidation and dealing with the sequelae of bankruptcy. Its own, that is.

The "crooks" were ultimately found not guilty on the final appeal. But since the execution had already been carried out ...

I had friends and acquaintances that went to work for AA's accounting division (others went with Deloitte and Touche); they didn't touch Enron stuff. After AA was tainted, they were out of a job, had trouble getting work, and wound up dropping down to the bottom of the totem pool. In some cases, it was a couple of years before they got to start back at the bottom.

[SoCalDem]

10. The principles landed on their feet in a different form..

Don't worry about these folks, they ALWAYS land on their feet.. they change their names to protect the not-so-innocent, and start a new scam..

Choicepoint is a morph..Accenture in a morph..the tobacco companies morphed into "food/soft drink/snack company" persona..

It's all smoke & mirrors.. They take a slap on the wrist, bleed all the wealth out of the existing company, fire a bunch of low-level people, toss a person or two onto the fire, and then re-iinvent themselves..