Was Andersen's Fall Really Necessary?

US accounting giant Arthur Andersen was certainly negligent in its dealings with Enron, but did it really deserve such severe punishment?

US accounting giant Arthur Andersen crippled in 2002 for its involvement with Enron was indeed "naughty", or at the very least "grossly negligent", says Rob Cox on Breakingviews.com. Yet was the destruction of firm the right outcome for what may merely have been the "paper-shredding of a few of its dunderhead executives"?

The question has once again come to the fore following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Andersen's 2002 criminal conviction on Tuesday. According to the chief justice, their decision to withhold damaging information was not "inherently malign", says Jess Bravin in The Wall Street Journal. However, for Andersen which has slumped from the illustrious US company that employed some 30,000 staff to employing just 200 people to mainly handle the firm's remaining lawsuits the decision is "little more than an epilogue".

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