Andersen's Future at Stake After Enron

In recent months, the Big Five firm, now known only as Andersen, had been facing mounting criticism from lawmakers and investors alike for blessing Enron's books.

Can anyone say: "Big Four firm?"

I was the manager at a Fortune 500 company, for a system development project, and we used Andersen Consulting. They were expensive, arrogant "know it alls," and I tried to tell my superiors the project was doomed. Since we paid so much money to Andersen, my superiors listened to them, fired me, spent more money with Andersen, but finally cancelled the project.

If they had listened to me, it would have saved a lot of money, and my job. Maybe they would have listened to me, if they were paying me as much as we were billed for the senior level consultants. If I recall, in 1982 an Andersen manager cost us $141 per hour.

"Accenture" is the current incarnation of Andersen Consulting. How ironic that the name change will distance them from the audit debaucle soon to be wrought, as clients depart (I expect). Somewhere I heard that "Consulting" wanted to keep the Andersen name, but it was fought and no allowed to be used, for the spinoff. Wasn't it a "back to back" type of deal?

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