Britannica Money (2024)

Arthur Andersen, Arthur Andersen LLP was one of the largest public accounting firms in the 1990s, with more than 85,000 employees operating in 84 countries. During the last decade of the partnership’s life, auditors at several regional offices failed to detect, ignored, or approved accounting frauds for large clients paying lucrative consulting fees, including Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. In 2002 the partnership was found guilty of obstruction of justice for destroying documents related to the Enron audit, a decision later unanimously overturned by the United States Supreme Court.

Consulting Schemes

For more than a half century, Arthur Andersen—cofounded as Andersen, DeLany & Co. in 1913 by Arthur E. Andersen, a young accounting professor who had a reputation for acting with integrity—was primarily an auditing firm focused on providing high-quality standardized audits. But a shift in emphasis during the 1970s pitted a new generation of auditors advocating for clients and consulting fees against traditional auditors demanding more complex auditing techniques. The problem worsened when the company’s consulting division began generating significantly higher profits per employee than the auditing division. Auditing revenues had flattened, and growth came primarily through consulting fees. Consulting schemes encouraged by Andersen partners included the following:

• Using highly qualified consultants from other regional offices to market their services during client presentations and then not including them on the project team after the contract was obtained
• Determining the client’s budget for consulting services and then selling as many consulting services as possible up to that budget limit, even if the services were unnecessary
• Charging clients a partner’s high billable-hour rate and then assigning most of the work to lower-paid and less-qualified staff

The Enron Audit

The combination of more complex financial statements, more aggressive accounting techniques, greater concern for customer satisfaction, greater dependence on consulting fees, and smaller cost-effective sampling techniques created many problems for auditing firms. Arthur Andersen’s Houston office was billing Enron $1 million per week for auditing and consulting services, and David Duncan, the lead auditor, had an annual performance goal of 20% increase in sales. Duncan favorably reviewed the work of Rick Causey, Enron’s chief accounting officer and Duncan’s former colleague at Andersen. Duncan let Enron employees intimidate Andersen auditors, such as locking an Andersen auditor in a room until he produced a letter supporting a $270 million tax credit.

The Indictment

In June 2001 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a cease-and-desist order against Andersen regarding any securities violations for its role in a $1.43 billion accounting fraud at Waste Management Inc. The cease-and-desist arrived after Andersen had already reached a civil settlement and agreed to pay a $7 million fine for malfeasance with regard to the Waste Management case. Andersen partners were warned that any future violation would result in an extreme penalty from the Justice Department.

By late September 2001, Enron insiders knew the firm would publicly announce on October 16 a third quarter operating loss, along with an after-tax nonrecurring charge of more than $1 billion. Both Enron and Arthur Andersen went into a crisis management mode to prepare for an anticipated SEC investigation. On October 12, Andersen’s in-house lawyer requested that the director of Andersen’s Houston office comply with the company’s documentation retention policy—all extraneous documents should be destroyed.

As expected, the SEC requested Enron audit information on October 17. Six days later, Duncan ordered his audit team to destroy documents at a pace quicker than required by the documentation retention policy. Within 3 days, an unprecedented amount of material had been shredded, and e-mails and computer files deleted, in Houston and several other regional offices. The SEC formally subpoenaed Andersen for Enron-related material on November 8, though the shredding came to a stop only the following day.

CEO Joseph Berardino immediately notified the SEC on finding out about the excessive document shredding, and he fired Duncan following the public uproar. Andersen’s response was considered inadequate given that three other major corporations for whom Andersen recently issued unqualified or clean audit opinions—Global Crossing, WorldCom, and Qwest—were either being investigated by the SEC, drastically restating previous financial statements, or abruptly declaring bankruptcy.

On March 14, 2002, the Justice Department indicted Andersen for obstruction of justice. Clients wanting to assure investors that their financial statements could meet the highest accounting standards abandoned Andersen for its competitors. They were soon followed by Andersen employees and entire offices. Berardino was forced to resign, and thousands of employees were laid off.

In early April, Duncan pleaded guilty to one felony count of obstruction of justice. Andersen requested and received a speedy trial because of the mass client defection. On June 15, 2002, Arthur Andersen was found guilty of shredding evidence and lost its license to engage in public accounting. Three years later, Andersen lawyers successfully persuaded the United States Supreme Court to unanimously overturn the obstruction of justice verdict on the basis of faulty jury instructions. But by then there was nothing left of the firm beyond 200 employees managing its lawsuits.