IBM to purchase PricewaterhouseCoopers consulting. (News, Trends & Analysis).For accounting firms that moonlight An open source version of Microsoft's Silverlight from the Mono project. Moonlight provides a runtime engine that allows Silverlight applications to run on Linux and also provides a Linux software development kit (SDK) for building Silverlight applications. as consultants, there has always been a potential for conflict of interest. But in the wake of the Enron scandal The Enron scandal was a financial scandal that was revealed in late 2001. After a series of revelations involving irregular accounting procedures bordering on fraud, perpetrated throughout the 1990s, involving Enron and its accounting firm Arthur Andersen, it stood at the verge of , in which Arthur Andersen For the U.S. Supreme Court case commonly known as Arthur Andersen, see . Arthur Andersen LLP, based in Chicago, was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms (the other four are PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young and KPMG), performing , Enron's auditor, also collected sizable siz·a·ble also size·a·ble adj. Of considerable size; fairly large. siz  a·ble·ness n. consulting fees, accounting firms that also offer
consulting services Noun 1. consulting service - service provided by a professional advisor (e.g., a lawyer or doctor or CPA etc.)service - work done by one person or group that benefits another; "budget separately for goods and services" have been trying to separate the two functions--and quickly. Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has been pursuing options to spin off its consulting business for two years, so the recent announcement that IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) plans to purchase PricewaterhouseCoopers was not a big surprise. For IBM, the move will accelerate its shift from selling just computers and software toward a future of providing information technology to corporate customers just as utility companies provide them electricity and gas. It agreed to pay $3.5 billion--$2.7 in cash and the balance in stock and convertible notes--for the consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers. As for PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, the brand will disappear as it is fully integrated under the IBM brand. Critics have argued for years that consulting and auditing should be separate functions in order to eliminate the pressure auditors might feel in a role where they may be acting as independent accountants of a company's books while their firm collects consulting fees from the same client. The planned sale of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting leaves just one big accounting firm, Deloitte & Touche, with a large consulting operation. However, Deloitte has said it, too, plans to sell off its consulting business by the end of 2002. |
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