1. The Collapse of Arthur Andersen

Andersen Worldwide—the parent company to Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting—began the decade as the world’s largest consulting firm.

| December 13, 2009

Arthur Andersen Andersen Worldwide—the parent company to Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting—began the decade as the world's largest consulting firm. It had been the profession's largest consulting organization every year since Consulting 's publisher, Kennedy Information, began its annual consulting rankings in the early 1980s. But the rein effectively came to an end on Monday, August 7, 2000.

On that day, an arbitration report was issued allowing the then almost $10 billion Andersen Consulting (now known as Accenture) to walk away from its parent company in exchange for merely giving up the Andersen brand and releasing the approximately $1 billion in funds it had already put aside in escrow as part of the firm's annual profit sharing agreement.

Cover January/February 2004 The arbitrator's decision was not what Arthur Andersen partners had expected. Arthur Andersen had asked for $14.6 billion, which would have amounted to a payday of about $7.7 million, on average, for each of the firm's 1,900 equity partners. Instead, the roughly $1 billion payout netted the average partner less than $600,000.

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