Former Andersen chief slams Big Four
Joe Berardino, former chief executive of Arthur Andersen, has slammed the accounting industry, saying it faces ruin unless the Big Four get their acts together.
Link: Berardino accuses US prosecutors of ‘over-reaching’
He said that a ‘dangerous complacency’ has struck the industry and that ‘the crisis did not rise up overnight and we cannot wish it away. The seeds were planted years ago’.
Berardino was speaking at a conference organised by the American Institute of Chartered Accountants and said that he had become dismayed at the attitude of the heads of the remaining Big Four.
‘They think it can’t happen to them,’ he said. ‘Talk to me a year ago and I would have said the same thing.’