EVEN now the speed of the Andersen disintegration is hard to fathom. It took barely three months to destroy a firm that had a history dating back 90 years and which generated global revenues of more than $9 billion a year.

In early January 2002 Andersen admitted that a “significant” number of Enron documents had been disposed of. It blamed the lapse on unnamed individuals working on the Enron audit. US politicians seized the moment, hammering Andersen for their own political agendas. Once this started, the firm was doomed.

The biggest blow to Andersen came when clients began to defect. A seepage turned into a torrent as big name companies dumped Andersen as auditor, concerned about the risk to their reputations.

Andersen tried to take the sting out of the “shredding” revelations, saying that documents were routinely destroyed as part of good housekeeping. It hit out at “illinformed” press reporting.

But by mid-March 2002 the firm was on the brink of falling apart. Scenting blood, other members of the accountancy Big Five, as it was — KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) — competed with one another to buy chunks of the Andersen network. Andersen announced a global merger with KPMG but the deal unravelled as individual practices broke ranks to sign up with rival firms.

Andersen’s US practice was dealt a fatal blow when the US Administration banned it from taking on government contracts. In the UK, Andersen linked with Deloitte.

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