Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Get free updates
Register easily Accounting and consulting services myFT Digest — delivered straight to your inbox.
In the year Andersen Consulting, one of the most powerful professional services brands of the 1990s, is about to be resurrected with the help of the man who led the firm for a decade.
In the year Andersen Global, a tax business founded by former auditor Arthur Andersen of the firm’s parent company, collapsed in 2002 after the Enron accounting scandal. The Andersen Consulting name has been rebranded since 2000, when the business was separated from Arthur Andersen. Emphasis.
Andersen Global is quietly building its consulting arm after hiring George Shaheen, who was CEO of Andersen Consulting from 1989 to 1999, as a senior adviser. He plans to relaunch the historic trademark next month, according to people familiar with the effort.
Andersen Global was founded 23 years ago by former Arthur Andersen tax partner Mark Vorsatz, originally under the name WTAS. It acquired the rights to the Anderson brand and rebranded itself in 2014. The business is structured as a combination of independent member firms and other affiliates with annual revenues of $2.5 billion.
While it has so far focused on tax and legal work — like Arthur Andersen and most accounting and tax businesses today — the opportunity to sell additional services to clients has been challenged.
In the last six months, it has added 20 member organizations based in the United States and around the world ConsultingPeople familiar with the deal spoke.
Many are related to Andersen Counsel or Arthur Andersen, the people said. They include Veraki, an African IT solutions business led by the former head of Accenture in Nigeria, and Daniel Consulting, a strategy group founded by Arthur Andersen when it collapsed.
Andersen Global has appointed Morgan Stanley to explore the US business, where it will further integrate the new advisory business to unlock capital to acquire other member firms.
In the year In the 1990s, Arthur Andersen’s consulting business eclipsed the accounting firm he created, and the brand still resonates, Vorsatz said.
“Andersen Consulting was Coca-Cola’s professional services,” he said. “If you’re over 40 in business, you know Andersen Consulting.”
Shaheen aims to provide consulting services from strategy advice and IT transition to cyber security and sustainability for Andersen Global’s new member firms by coordinating business development. It says it does not compete with one of Accenture’s core businesses as an outsourcing service provider.
“Accenture is a great company, but we have no plans to repeat it.”
The new Andersen Consulting differs from its pre-1990s counterpart in that it is not involved in the auditing business, as conflict-of-interest regulations prohibit selling audits to clients.
“Anderson today doesn’t have that freedom issue and we can be as aggressive as we want,” Shaheen said.
Until he left for the ailing dotcom venture Webvan, Shahin led a recurring effort at Arthur Andersen’s consulting business to become more autonomous than the accounting firm, which became one of the great corporate soap operas of the professional services sector.
For most of the 1990s, Andersen Consulting and Arthur Andersen operated as sister firms under an umbrella firm, but when his accounting business outgrew a second consulting job in direct competition, Shahin filed for divorce.
Andersen Consulting was forced by an arbitrator to drop the name as part of a legal separation in late 2000. Accenture floated in the US the following year and is now the world’s largest consulting firm by revenue.
