It has been two years since Big Five firm Andersen crumbled under the combined weight of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Most Andersen people moved to Deloitte & Touche with a significant part of the firm's business, but Damian Wild and Michelle Perry meet four accountants who didn't follow the herd and for whom the collapse represented a turning point in their lives. Scroll down to read their stories:
Click here to retrace the Andersen saga
Life after Andersen: The one who became a wild boar farmer
Ernie Smart’s mind is elsewhere. Shuffling in his seat, he pulls on his beer bottle and sinks in to the sofa. His partner, Lucinda Spicer, seems more at home, even though being interviewed isn’t the most natural experience.
Life after Andersen: The one who left to run a business
‘In a sense, this was just one of a number of events that were the product of the euphoria of the late nineties in financial markets around the world, when there was a divorce between economic performance and people’s perception of what was happening. That was the background to the collapse at Enron. It set the climate and wasn’t the cause,’ says Richard Simmons CBE, a former partner at Andersen.
Life after Andersen: The one who went on to bigger things
Jane Christie, a manager at Deloitte & Touche, was still in her training contract at Andersen’s London offices when the news hit that the firm was embroiled in the Enron scandal in 2001.
Life after Andersen: The one who went to the big rival
Eamonn Rice’s accountancy career began and ended with the Andersen worldwide partnership, broken only by a period with rival PricewaterhouseCoopers in the US.