Certain characteristics of contemporary business extend from the still-high and mighty all the way down to the already-humbled and chastened.  Case in point:  Sunbeam Corporation, which had to reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

In May of 2001, the SEC filed suit against the former CEO and other executives of Sunbeam, accusing them of engaging in a massive financial fraud.  In the aftermath, Sunbeamhad to restate its financial results for the six quarters before the CEO was ousted, and the former CEO agreed to pay $15 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit.

It was probably not surprising, in retrospect, to learn that the accounting firm involved in all of this was Andersen. 

It was equally unsurprising—but also equally fitting—to find Al Dunlap as the offending CEO. 

Nicknamed “Chainsaw Al” for the enthusiasm he displayed in cutting jobs at various companies to trick up stock prices, Dunlap came to epitomize the CEO who could be counted on to do whatever suited Wall Street’s fancy of the moment.

There had been a time, long before Dunlap’s rise to CEO status, when companies in genuine need of staff reductions went to great lengths to avoid them, out of fear of sending a message to Wall Street that they were “troubled.”  Then fashions changed, the stock market became enamored of “downsizing,” and companies’ share prices began to go up almost automatically on the news of major staff cutbacks. 

Were all layoffs in the past inadvisable on their own merits, and are all more recent layoffs advisable on the same grounds?  Common sense would suggest otherwise.  But layoffs were what got Wall Street’s juices flowing during most of his tenure, and Chainsaw Al was more than willing to oblige.

Dunlap’s more recent involvement in financial reporting fraud provided an appropriately graphic symbol of how in today’s corporate environment, financial results, like layoffs, can be just another part of the show.

And of course, for its part, Andersen’s involvement in the Sunbeam fraud reflected a parallel change in the role of the auditor:  from paragon of probity to embarrassed accessory, on the order of an exposed shill at an old-time medicine-show.