Collapse of Arthur Andersen LLP

To those who think that the destruction of Arthur Andersen was an over-reaction, keep in mind that we are not just talking about Enron. Arthur Andersen over its last few years also signed off on the extremely dirty books of Sunbeam, Waste Management, Global Crossing, Qwest, and (most appaling of all) WorldCom. This was clearly not just a few bad apples but a systemic cancer within a company that not that long ago was held up as the paragon of auditing ethics.

Staff:

Of course, the jewel of the crown was Arthur Andersen's tax practice, with its approximately 500 US partners, which was won by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in April 2002.

The other big ticket item in the collapse of Arthur Andersen LLP was that Robert Half International established the firm Protiviti by hiring more than 700 professionals from the risk consulting practice including more than 50 partners.

The rest of the firm was carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey...

Ernst & Young Acquires Arthur Andersen's Chesapeake Office - 350 employees including 39 partners.

Ernst & Young Acquires Pittsburgh Offce - 87 employees including 8 partners.

Ernst & Young Acquires Louisville Office - 45 employees including 3 partners.

Ernst & Young acquired the Financial and Commodities Risk Consulting and Financial Services practices of Arthur Andersen's Chicago office - 65 employees including 12 partners

Ernst & Young hired 78 Andersen staffers in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

Ernst & Young acquired Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and Toledo offices - 159 employees including 14 partners

Ernst & Young hires approximately 100 Arthur Andersen professionals including 6 partners from Andersen's Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, and San Diego practices.

Deloitte & Touche acquired about 950 staffers from the Chicago office, far more than any other Big Four firm.

Deloitte & Touche acquired 225 employees from the Milwaukee office

Deloitte & Touche acquired 50 employees from the Las Vegas office

Deloitte & Touche acquired the Minneapolis office - 229 employees including 16 partners

From the Atlanta office, Deloitte & Touche hired 359 employees including 39 partners, and Ernst & Young hired 51 employees including 5 partners

The Boston office was divided up between the Big Four - Ernst & Young signed up 15 partners, PricewaterhouseCoopers 5 partners, Deloitte & Touche 11 partners and KPMG 4 partners

KPMG picked up more than 200 employees and partners from the Seattle office

Grant Thornton picked up 50 employees including 6 partners from the New York office

Grant Thornton got 161 employees including 19 partners in Charlotte, Greensboro and Columbia

Grant Thornton buys Tulsa office with 35 employees

Huron Consulting Group was formed by 35 Andersen professionals, mostly from the financial consulting practice, in Chicago.

Keep in mind that this entire process was started in April and was completed by July. I did not think a company with 28,000 US employees (85,000 globally) could collapse in four months. If anybody has information on offices that are not listed here, I'd like to hear from you. In particular, I am interested in learning what happened to the rest of the NYC office.

Clients:

This list is entirely too long to reproduce in this blog since Arthur Andersen had almost 2500 clients. In this case, I will rely on internet links and hope they do not die on me.

http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=74745
http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/13/0313andersen.html
http://www.forbes.com/2002/06/28/0627andersen.html