The Hindu : Anderson to sell divisions

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 10, 2002

Business

Business

Anderson to sell divisions

NEW YORK MAY 9. Arthur Andersen announced separate deals on Wednesday with KPMG Consulting, Deloitte & Touche and Ernst & Young to sell various parts of its business, the first of what is likely to be a series of transactions that Andersen rushes to conclude before the criminal case against it goes to a jury.

KPMG Consulting, which spun off from the Big Five accounting firm KPMG last year, has entered into a non-binding agreement to pay as much as $284 million for the bulk of the consulting business of Arthur Andersen and Andersen Worldwide, the international network of accounting firms to which Arthur Andersen belongs.

Andersen also announced that it had closed a deal with Deloitte & Touche for the sale of much of Andersen's tax advisory practice. Under the deal, which was announced several weeks ago, about 2,000 Andersen employees in offices across the U.S. would move to Deloitte. Other terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Separately, Ernst & Young announced that it had acquired Andersen's tax and audit practices in Pittsburgh for an undisclosed sum.

The different transactions are evidence of the pressure on Andersen to close deals as quickly as possible before the federal judge overseeing the firm's trial for destroying documents related to its audit of Enron turns the case over to a jury later this month. A verdict in that criminal trial could have a devastating effect on merger or acquisition discussions, lawyers said.

— AP

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Business