Arthur Andersen

Tansley Witt began in practice in 1866 not 1845 (Tansley Witt's obituary, provided by Mrs Diana Brooks, see also Tansley Witt's obituary in The Accountant, 2 October 1915, p.401).

Percy Phillips & Co (now Percy Phillips) is a continuing practice of chartered accountants and was never part of Arthur Andersen & Co. Bernard Phillips & Co was set up in 1948, but when Bernard Phillips withdrew from this practice, its name became Newman Harris & Co. A new practice, Bernard Phillips & Co, was started in 1955 dealing with insolvency matters, and it was this practice which merged with Arthur Andersen & Co in 1982 (Information supplied by Percy Phillips, 1989).

Arthur Andersen & Co became simply Arthur Andersen in the early 1990s.

Seven BDO Binder Hamlyn offices joined Arthur Andersen from October 1994; these offices practised in the name of Binder Hamlyn until January 2002 when they adopted the Arthur Andersen name (Accountancy, August 1994, p.13, October 1994, p.13 and November 1994, p.13, and Notice of the Soil Association Annual General Meeting 2002, p.3).

The UK offices of Arthur Andersen amalgamated with Deloitte & Touche on 1 August 2002, the new firm practising under the latter name (Accountancy, September 2002, p.25

What's in a name: Firms' simplified family trees

Between January and December 1989, accounting historian Peter Boys prepared a series of simplified family trees showing the development of the big accountancy firms of the day.

The original trees from 1989 have been reproduced here with a series of textual updates from Peter Boys which have taken the story forward to May 2005, the 125th anniversary of ICAEW. Since then, the staff of the ICAEW Library & Information Service have added notes on further changes that have taken place.

If you are aware of any further information which would add to or improve the accuracy of the family trees please let us know.