Arthur Andersen was an American accounting firm based in Chicago that provided auditing, tax advising, consulting and other professional services to large corporations. By 2001, it had become one of the world's largest multinational corporations and was one of the "Big Five" accounting firms (along with Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers). The firm collapsed by mid-2002, as details of its questionable accounting practices for energy company Enron and telecommunications company Worldcom were revealed amid the two high-profile bankruptcies. The scandals were a factor in the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. In 2002, just nine months after the scandal broke, the firm was found guilty of crimes in the auditing of Enron. By that time, Arthur Andersen had lost most of its business and two-thirds of its 28,000 employees, and was facing multi-million dollar lawsuits. On August 31, 2002, the company surrendered its licenses to practice as certified public accountants in the United States, effectively putting the company out of business. In 2005, the United States Supreme Court unanimously reversed Arthur Andersen's conviction due to errors in the trial judge's instructions to the jury that convicted the firm. Despite this, the damage to Andersen's reputation was so great that it has never returned as a viable auditor even on a limited scale. , some parts of the company continue to exist: the company's consulting services have been split out and continue today as Accenture and Protiviti, while some of the former partners formed a new firm in 2002 focused on tax services, now called Andersen Tax. History Founding Born May 30, 1885, in Plano, Illinois, and orphaned at the age of 16, Arthur E. Andersen began working as a mail boy by day and attended school at night, eventually being hired as the assistant to the comptroller of Allis-Chalmers in Chicago. In 1908, after attending courses at night while working full-time, he graduated from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University with a bachelor's degree in business. That same year, at age 23, he became the youngest Certified Public Accountant in Illinois. In 1913, Andersen and Clarence DeLany founded an accounting firm as Andersen, DeLany & Co. The firm changed its name to Arthur Andersen & Co. in 1918. Arthur Andersen's first client was the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company of Milwaukee. In 1915, due to his many contacts there, the Milwaukee office was opened