Arthur Andersen

This article is about the company. For its founder, see Arthur E. Andersen. For the U.S. Supreme Court case, see Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States. For the songwriter and composer, see Arthur Olaf Andersen.

Arthur Andersen LLP
Company typePrivate
Industry
Founded1913; 111 years ago (1913)
FounderArthur E. Andersen
DefunctAugust 31, 2002 (2002-08-31) (CPA licenses surrendered)
FateDissolved after the Enron scandal
Successor
Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois
,
U.S.
RevenueUS$9.3 billion (2002)
Number of employees
28,000 (2002)
Websiteandersen.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 2001-06-10)

Arthur Andersen LLP was an American accounting firm based in Chicago that provided auditing, tax advising, consulting and other professional services to large corporations. By 2001, it had become one of the world's largest multinational corporations and was one of the "Big Five" accounting firms (along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers). The firm collapsed by mid-2002, as details of its questionable accounting practices for energy company Enron and telecommunications company WorldCom were revealed amid the two high-profile bankruptcies. The scandals were a factor in the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002.