[KC Burke]

These firms are almost all LLC Partnership firms. The merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers Lybrand required the enfolding of puchased partners to keep equity in the firm...very convoluted.

Only about half of Andersen's business is audit business as I recall. Many of the firm's divisions work in different fields like Consulting, Collection, Tax Policy Analysis etc.

I am simply amazed that many posters here think there is any difference between big accounting firms. Some how A. Andersen is a big bad Dirty Finacial Firm and punishment and blame are going to make them feel better about the world.

All of the big corporations such as Enron have their creative accounting schemes and it is only good management, not auditors, that keep it in check. Auditors are only able to look for purely cooked-books like the Pharmor Pharmacy chain a decade ago when the head guy was stealing the money of his own firm to buy WFL teams etc.

Andersen is just a media and congress-critter fall guy.

[Roger_W_Isom]

These LLCs are the REAL problem folks!!!! the sooner they are done away, THE BETTER!!!!!!!you can simply get into TOO MUCH TROUBLE.... ENRON and their INCESTOUS RELATIONSHIP with AA PROVES IT!!!!! were a judge to declare these ILLEGAL and UNCONSTITUTIONAL would be a WISE first step....

[cactmh]

Of course not all people in Andersen are rotten, in fact most aren't. However, as someone else noted, corporate cultures are all different throughout the firms and some are a little more shady than others and some are more dorky than others etc.