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by krn 1170 days ago
> Well ok, but was EY less competent than McKinsey or did they just get unlucky that they're the poor bastards who stepped on the landmine?

I have asked myself the same question, before I noticed that EY is basically the Credit Suisse and the SoftBank of the audit world[1]:

> EY has been involved in many accounting scandals: Bank of Credit and Commerce International (1991), Informix Corporation (1996), Sybase (1997), Cendant (1998), One.Tel (2001), AOL (2002), HealthSouth Corporation (2003), Chiquita Brands International (2004), Lehman Brothers (2010), Sino-Forest Corporation (2011), Olympus Corporation (2011), Stagecoach Group (2017), Wirecard (2020), Luckin Coffee (2020) and NMC Health (2020).

In fact, Wirecard managed to partner with EY, Credit Suisse, and SoftBank simultaneously just before going bankrupt.

Maybe because no reputable companies wanted to touch it?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_%26_Young#Accounting_sca...
2 comments
jasmer 1169 days ago
E&Y and McKinsey are not remotely in the same business.

E&T are accountants who double check that your financials are what they say they are.

McKinsey are management consultants who generally do strategic projects, and/or facilitate other consultants to actually do work.

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cgeier 1169 days ago
EY also has a management consulting arm, not sure how successful they are though.

https://www.ey.com/en_gl/strategy-transactions/strategy-serv...

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hef19898 1170 days ago
Well, EY started as part of Andressen (?) and was as such part of the Enron scandal. We shouldn't ignore the scandal of the century. EY so is a very reputable accounting firm. Unreputable would be the Metaverse headquartered shop FTX used.
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tim-- 1170 days ago
You might be thinking of Accenture, which was founded from the ashes of Andersen Consulting.

Andressen is one half of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) which (I think?) doesn't have any connection to Enron.

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er4hn 1170 days ago
The OP is thinking of "Arthur Andersen", the accounting firm that serviced both Enron and Worldcom. The first paragraph of Wikipedia cites the scandals as factors in enacting SOX (src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen)
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Zafira 1170 days ago
Accenture is Andersen Consulting. It left and changed its name to Accenture because of internal infighting and politics prior to the Enron scandal that took down Andersen entirely.
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bayouborne 1169 days ago
The name Accenture was also chosen because they were able to keep using Andersen Consulting's existing ac.com domain w/o interruption.
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cgeier 1169 days ago
It wasn't, it was spun out before Enron.
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