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by StClaire
2833 days ago
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I've seen a couple comments about Arthur Andersen, Enron, and Accenture in this thread and I just want to detail everything that went down in that situation. Full Disclosure: I recently left a position with one of Accenture's subsidiary. I also hate that company. The Supreme Court actually vacated Arthur Andersen's conviction for their actions in Enron. The SC basically said the jury instructions were too vague, and the jury could have believed that Arthur Andersen thought they did everything right and legally but still voted to convict. Arthur Andersen was never retried since there wasn't much left at that point anyway. Arthur Andersen Accounting (or whatever they formally called themselves) and Arthur Andersen Consulting had already broken up into two different companies. They set up some weird agreement where the more profitable of the two would pay a cut of the profit difference to the other company. Consulting is always more profitable than accounting (which is why all the Big 4 have gotten back into even in the age of Sarbane-Oxley, where they can't audit a company they consult for), so Arthur Andersen consulting had to send a big-ass check to the accountants every quarter and they wanted to get out of that. The blow up of Arthur Andersen accounting presented the perfect opportunity. Arthur Andersen Consulting changed their name to Accenture to distance themselves from the Enron scandal, but it was mostly PR because they didn't have anything to do with Enron anyway. McKinsey, however, had consultants all through Enron. I believe Skilling worked for McKinsey right out of college and threw them a ton of work. There's no way people at McKinsey didn't know what Enron was up to, but they somehow got off scot-free |
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The name change was in place before Enron went bankrupt, and was a condition of the settlement with Andersen Consulting. It was very fortunate timing indeed.