Accenture
Accenture plc is a professional services company providing information technology and management consulting, incorporated and headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Founded in the United States, it operates across more than 120 countries and is one of the largest employers in the world, with a workforce numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
| Accenture plc | |
|---|---|
| Type | Public |
| Traded as | NYSE: ACN |
| Industry | Professional services, management consulting, information technology |
| Founded | 1989 (as Andersen Consulting); renamed Accenture 1 January 2001 |
| Headquarters | Dublin, Ireland |
| Area served | More than 120 countries |
| Key people | Julie Sweet (chair and CEO) |
| Services | Strategy and Consulting, Technology, Operations, Accenture Song, Industry X |
| Website | accenture.com |
Accenture occupies an unusual position in the consulting industry. It emerged from the technology arm of an accounting firm, separated from that parent after a decade of internal conflict, and in doing so escaped the collapse that destroyed Arthur Andersen in the Enron scandal. It ranked 211th on the Fortune Global 500 as of January 2026.
History
Origins at Arthur Andersen, 1950s to 1989
Accenture began as the business and technology consulting division of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen in the early 1950s. Its formative engagement was a feasibility study for General Electric on installing a computer at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky. The study led GE to install a UNIVAC I computer and printer, believed to be the first commercial use of a computer in the United States.
The episode set the pattern for the business that followed: advising large organisations on how to apply computing to administrative processes, a service that grew in step with the technology itself.
Split from Arthur Andersen, 1989 to 2001
In 1989 Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting became separate units of Andersen Worldwide Société Coopérative, a Swiss coordinating entity. Tension between them grew steadily through the 1990s.
The cause was structural. A provision of the 1989 separation required whichever unit was more profitable to pay the other 15 per cent of its profits. Andersen Consulting, growing rapidly on technology work, was consistently the payer, transferring up to 15 per cent of its profits annually to the accounting firm. At the same time Arthur Andersen established its own competing practice, Arthur Andersen Business Consulting, so that the consultants were funding a direct competitor.
Andersen Consulting sought arbitration, and in 2000 the arbitrator freed it from all contractual ties to Andersen Worldwide and Arthur Andersen. The settlement required Andersen Consulting to pay 1.2 billion dollars, substantially less than Arthur Andersen had sought, and to surrender the Andersen name.
On 1 January 2001 Andersen Consulting adopted the name Accenture, derived from accent on the future. The name was submitted by Kim Petersen, a Danish employee in the company's Oslo office, who chose a meaningless coinage in the hope that it would not be offensive in any country where the firm operated.
Incorporation and listing, 2001 to 2009
Accenture was incorporated in Bermuda in 2001. Its initial public offering was priced at 14.50 dollars a share on 19 July 2001, with the shares trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
The separation from Arthur Andersen proved providential. On 16 June 2002 the accounting firm was convicted of obstruction of justice over its destruction of documents relating to Enron, a conviction later overturned by the Supreme Court in Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States but too late to save the firm, which collapsed. Had the 2000 arbitration gone differently, Accenture would have been entangled in that failure.
Ireland and expansion, 2009 onward
On 26 May 2009 Accenture announced that its board had unanimously approved moving the company's place of incorporation from Bermuda to Ireland.
Since 2013 the company has acquired more than 200 businesses, a programme of continuous small-scale purchasing that has extended its capabilities into digital design, marketing, cloud engineering, cybersecurity and industrial technology rather than adding scale in traditional consulting. It has been a strategic partner of the Alan Turing Institute since 2017.
In January 2026 Accenture announced the acquisition of Faculty, a British artificial intelligence company, in a transaction valuing it at one billion dollars. In March 2026 it agreed to acquire Ookla, the Seattle network intelligence company behind Speedtest, Downdetector, Ekahau and RootMetrics, from Ziff Davis for 1.2 billion dollars.
Services and operations
Accenture organises its business into five segments:
- Strategy and Consulting, covering corporate strategy, operating model design and organisational change
- Technology, covering systems integration, application development and cloud migration
- Operations, covering managed services and business process outsourcing
- Accenture Song, formerly Accenture Interactive, covering marketing, design and customer experience
- Industry X, covering engineering, manufacturing technology and connected products
The company's delivery model relies heavily on large offshore centres, particularly in India and the Philippines, where a substantial majority of its workforce is based. This structure allows Accenture to compete on price with both traditional strategy consultancies and Indian technology services companies.
Leadership
- Joe Forehand, 1999 to 2004
- William D. Green, 2004 to 2011
- Pierre Nanterme, 2011 to 2019
- David Rowland, 2019, interim
- Julie Sweet, 2019 to present
Pierre Nanterme stepped down in January 2019 for health reasons and died later that month. Julie Sweet, previously chief executive of Accenture North America and before that the company's general counsel, became the first woman to lead the firm.
Controversies
Tax domicile
Accenture's corporate domicile has been criticised for more than two decades. The 2001 incorporation in Bermuda, a jurisdiction with no corporate income tax, drew objection in the United States on the grounds that a company whose business and leadership were substantially American was structuring itself to avoid American tax. The criticism was politically significant because Accenture held extensive United States federal government contracts, and legislation was repeatedly proposed to bar contracts with companies domiciled in tax havens.
The 2009 move to Ireland reduced the political exposure without greatly changing the underlying position, Ireland's corporate tax regime being among the most favourable in the developed world. The company maintains that its domicile reflects its status as a genuinely global business with no single national home.
NHS National Programme for IT
Accenture was one of the principal suppliers to the United Kingdom's National Programme for IT, an attempt begun in 2002 to build a unified electronic patient record system for the National Health Service. The programme became one of the largest public sector technology failures on record. Accenture withdrew in 2006, taking a charge of approximately 450 million dollars and handing its contracts to Computer Sciences Corporation. The programme was formally dismantled in 2011 having cost an estimated ten billion pounds.
Government contracting
The company's dependence on public sector work has produced recurrent controversy. Audits and parliamentary inquiries in several countries have questioned the cost and outcomes of large Accenture engagements, and in the United States its federal consulting contracts were substantially reduced in 2025 during a broad review of government advisory spending, which the company acknowledged would affect its revenue.
Tiger Woods sponsorship
Accenture had used the golfer Tiger Woods as the central figure of its global advertising since 2003, under the slogan Go on. Be a Tiger. In December 2009, following disclosures about Woods's private life, the company terminated the relationship, stating that he was no longer the right representative for its advertising. The abrupt removal of a personal brand from a corporate identity became a frequently cited case study in endorsement risk.
Workforce practices
As one of the largest employers in the world, Accenture has faced scrutiny over working hours, promotion practices and the use of subcontracted labour in offshore delivery centres. It has also been criticised, along with its competitors, for the environmental and social content of its consulting work, including advisory engagements for fossil fuel producers, which sit uneasily with its own published sustainability commitments.
See also
References