ABSTRACT
Few people would have expected to witness the demise of one of the “Big 5” public accounting firms, let alone have imagined the velocity of events that brought Arthur Andersen LLP down. On June 15, 2002, the firm was convicted on charges of obstruction of justice due to the destruction of documents related to its audit of Enron, the Houston-based energy giant.1 By September 2002, Arthur Andersen LLP essentially ceased to exist as a U.S. accounting firm, having surrendered all of its state licenses to practice. The collapse of the firm came just eleven months after in-house Andersen attorney Nancy Temple sent an email to Enron engagement partner David Duncan saying, “I suggested deleting some language that might suggest we have concluded the release is misleading.”2
