Who Founded Accenture?

Accenture has no single founder. It began in the early 1950s as the business and technology consulting practice of Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm founded in 1913. In 1953 an Arthur Andersen team led by Joseph Glickauf studied payroll automation for General Electric at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, which led GE to install a UNIVAC I computer in 1954. In 1989 the consulting practice became Andersen Consulting, a separate unit of Andersen Worldwide, with the more profitable unit paying the other up to 15% of its profits. Andersen Consulting filed for ICC arbitration in 1997 after Arthur Andersen built a competing consulting line. The ruling announced on August 7, 2000 let it leave, rejected Arthur Andersen's $14.5B claim, and required it to change its name and pay fees withheld during the dispute (The Guardian reported $850M; later accounts cite about $1.2B). The firm became Accenture on January 1, 2001 and went public on the NYSE on July 19, 2001, the year before Arthur Andersen was convicted over its Enron audit work. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

George Shaheen led Andersen Consulting from 1989 until September 1999. By the time he left, the consulting unit had about 65,000 staff. In 1997 it began the ICC arbitration to separate from Arthur Andersen. He left in 1999 to become CEO of online grocer Webvan, which filed for bankruptcy in 2001, so the arbitration outcome, the 2001 rename to Accenture and the July 2001 IPO took place under his successor, Joe Forehand. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).