Andersen-Ernst&Young merger officially announced

The Polish offices of consulting firms Ernst&Young (E&Y) and Andersen officially signed a merger decision yesterday, claiming that the new Ernst&Young will be the largest auditor on the domestic market. Although formally it was the Andersen team which joined E&Y, the new managing partner will be Andersen's Duleep Aluwihare with E&Y's current head Krzystof Kielbratowski as president. Aluwihare and Kielbratowski stressed that after Andersen's problems began in the US, 56 of the 84 Andersen offices around the world decided to join E&Y. Peter Driscoll, head of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which has until now been the leader on the Polish auditing market, says that it will take a while before the full effects of the merger can be evaluated and only then will it be possible to determine whether his company has in fact lost the lead position in the country. Last year, PwC recorded revenues of $77 million in Poland, while Andersen was second with $70 million. (Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 19) T.J.