The chief executive of True Partners Consulting, a new tax and business advisory firm, in Chicago, believes that the setting up of the firm can be looked at as Arthur Andersen coming back to Chicago.
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Cary McMillan: International expansion on the agenda |
"I think there's some feeling that with the Supreme Court decision invalidating the indictment against Arthur Andersen that this is a little bit, just a little bit, of a part payback, that Arthur Andersen, at least in one little way, is coming back," said Cary McMillan.
Audit conflict issues led five former partners of Arthur Andersen to set up the firm, which will provide consulting advice, such as on the tax issues relating to M&A and due diligence, compliance services, such as corporate income tax returns, and advice on unclaimed property.
McMillan told International Tax Review that the founders had not felt comfortable working for other multinational professional services firms after Arthur Andersen disbanded. "The idea was that five ex-Andersen partners who saw the world of tax and non-audit change dramatically, not just the fact that Arthur Andersen was gone, but the whole rules of the game and their future prospects change dramatically in the audit environment," he said. "They just decided they could not serve their client as true advocates and partners being in an audit firm and they decided to go out on their own."
In the short-term, McMillan hopes the firm will have between 150 and 200 tax professionals in locations throughout the US, including Chicago, New York (Manhattan and Long Island), Los Angeles, New Jersey and Tampa. He said the firm would be nothing like Arthur Andersen "with an office in every county".
International expansion is also on the firm's agenda, but McMillan could not predict when. "Clearly geographic expansion to Europe and Asia, maybe Latin America, is every desirable," he said. Neither could he be sure if expansion would be through the setting-up of new offices or establishing associations with existing firms. "It really depends on the desirability outside the US to partner up with us and the client requirements geographically.
Though he is also a former Andersen partner, where he worked for 19 years in audit, McMillan is not one of the founders of True Partners. In summer 2005 he was asked to assess the feasibility of the project and the autumn was spent raising the finance to set up the firm. The firm is backed by a private equity investment firm in Chicago and has also received support from the state of Illinois.
McMillan was previously chief financial officer of Sara Lee, a global consumer products company, and believes he brings a unique perspective to his "purely management" role at the new firm: "I've been both a professional service provider. I've been on the audit committees and the boards of directors of major corporations, so that's the US governance side of it, and I've also been a customer of the professional services firms, including Arthur Andersen, PricewaterhouseCoopers and all the rest."
His qualifications exclude him from an advisory role at True Partners: "I was at one time an audit partner, which is the one business I have sworn we'll never do. The thing I'm capable of doing is not on the table."
