- Andersen Consulting was once one of the top names in professional services.
- The firm rebranded to Accenture in 2000, and its parent company went bust following the Enron scandal.
- Now Andersen Consulting is making a comeback, The Financial Times reported.
One of the leading consulting brands of the 1990s, whose parent company was brought down in the Enron scandal, is making a comeback.
Andersen Consulting, which was one of the “Big Eight” consulting firms, will relaunch next month, unnamed sources told The Financial Times.
The firm’s comeback has been orchestrated by Andersen, a tax business founded in 2002 by former employees from Arthur Andersen, the once-prestigious accounting firm and the parent company of Andersen Consulting. It acquired rights to the Arthur Andersen name in 2014 and renamed itself Andersen in 2019.
Andersen has mostly focused on tax and legal work but has been steadily building a consulting division under the guidance of George Shaheen, a former CEO of Andersen Consulting in its heyday. Shaheen joined the group as a special advisor in 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile.
In the past six months, the company has added 20 member firms focused on consulting from the US and other countries, several of which have connections to the old Andersen Consulting and Arthur Andersen, the FT reported.
The resurrection of Andersen Consulting marks a major comeback for what was once a leading name in professional services.
“Andersen Consulting was the Coca-Cola of professional services,” Andersen’s global chairman and CEO Mark Vorsatz told the FT. “If you are over 40 in business, you know Andersen Consulting.”
The original Andersen Consulting split from its parent company, Arthur Andersen, in 2000 and rebranded as Accenture.
One year later, the Andersen name was tarnished when Arthur Andersen became embroiled in the Enron scandal. Executives at Enron, one of the largest energy providers in the US, were found to have hidden billions of dollars in debt by manipulating financial models and lying to investors.
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Enron filed for bankruptcy, and thousands of employees lost their jobs and retirement savings.
Arthur Andersen, Enron’s auditor, was found guilty of obstruction of justice for shredding its client’s auditing documents as the government started its investigation.
The fallout led to Arthur Andersen’s collapse in 2002, reducing the “Big Five” global accounting firms to four. It is one of the most dramatic corporate collapses in US history — one year earlier, the firm had reported roughly $9 billion in global revenue.
The rebooted version of Andersen Consulting would not try to compete with Accenture as an outsourcing services provider, Vorsatz told the FT.
Andersen did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
