Enron and Anderson

Yeah, and just wait until the hammer falls on Vinson & Elkins. I've read a lot of places where they are one of the next targets in the whole saga.

 

A very one-sided read in my opinion.

 

ask me about them some other time...

yeah...i don't see how they didn't know what was going on. certainly they had tax lawyers at the very least reviewing the whole setup.

 

I heard that The Firm was not-so-loosely based on Vinson & Elkins. I know that I've heard around a lot of really odd stuff about them.

 

yep...we've found them to be....interesting!

 

share please

 

I feel a little sorry for Arthur Anderson. There was a very sympathetic write-up of them last week in Newsweek, and it made it sound as if it was basically a responsible firm, that was in trouble because one project manager made a very, very bad decision.

Of course, maybe Newsweek got played...

 

I don't feel that it is necessarily just Arthur Anderson to blame in this issue. The entire industry has been to blame in their "consulting" companies that they are auditing routine.

This scenario is used by all the major firms and is a very serious conflict of interest. The auditing fees recieved by Anderson pale in comparison to the funds recieved by their consultants.

While we are reviewing and revising corporate governance and reporting laws we should also form legal boundries so there is no ability to steal from the cookie jar.

Anderson though is in a lot of trouble. Auditing firms are based solely on their reputation, and they also were fined $7 million dollars a few years back for their dealings with another Houston company, Waste Management. Though the situations differed, the lack of oversight on Anderson's part is not a striking revalation in the case of Enron.

 

Cohen: Do you mean that if the COMPANY audits someone, they won't consult for them as well or do you mean they just won't allow individual CPA's to both audit and consult?

Seems to me the practice of even allowing different employees to represent the same client in different capacities for one company has all sorts of ethical complications.

 

Khan -- while I agree in part, Andersen has set the threshhold for pushing the envelope for a LONG time!!! They do the stuff that other firms say, "no..we just can't do that," to. They are easily the most agressive of the big accounting firms.