Arthur Andersen Berardino joined
Arthur Andersen in 1972, after graduating from the
Fairfield University Dolan School of Business with a B.S. in accounting. He was admitted to the partnership in 1982, rising to head of Andersen's U.S. audit practice. In 1998, then
United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman
Arthur Levitt launched an attack on the auditing business. At that time, it was felt that accounting firms were conflicted by selling consulting services to the same companies whose books they were auditing. In 2000, Berardino negotiated a compromise with the SEC. Auditing and consulting fees would henceforth be disclosed. At Andersen, Berardino was admired for having negotiated this compromise, because a prohibition from signing consulting contracts with audit clients would have been very damaging to Andersen's business. Levitt praised Berardino's leadership in his book
Take on the Street.... Berardino became managing partner – chief executive officer of Andersen Worldwide (the governing body of Andersen's operations in 84 countries including 85,000 people) in January 2001 shortly after its split with Andersen Consulting (Accenture). When Andersen's client
Enron declared
bankruptcy in the highly publicized
Enron scandal, Berardino appeared before Congress and announced a series of steps to improve Andersen and the accounting profession. In early 2002, when Andersen discovered that its auditors had been involved with shredding documents related to the Enron audit, Berardino disclosed this activity voluntarily to the U.S. Department of Justice and the SEC. While in Tokyo meeting with Asia-Pacific partners in an attempt to keep the firm together, Berardino received the news that the U.S.
Justice Department was likely to
indict the firm. Berardino hired former
Federal Reserve chairman
Paul Volcker in February 2002 to create an independent oversight board and reform Andersen into a pure auditing business. On March 14, 2002, the Justice Department indicted Andersen for obstruction of justice based on the document shredding which took place. Initially, the firm's 18-strong Board of partners asked Berardino to stay on. He resigned on March 26, 2002, in the hope that justice would reconsider the indictment. They did not, and Andersen was convicted of
obstruction of justice on June 15, 2002. By the end of August, it surrendered its licenses to audit public companies in the US. In 2006, the
Supreme Court of the U.S. overturned this conviction in a unanimous opinion. It was a symbolic victory for the defunct accounting firm.
Profectus BioScience He was chairman and chief executive officer of Profectus BioSciences in
Baltimore,
Maryland up until January 24, 2008. Berardino continued with the company as a director through 2010. He had joined the company as a director in 2004. Profectus Biosciences, Inc. is a biotechnology start-up that develops therapeutic and vaccine technologies intended to reduce the morbidity and mortality caused by viral diseases. The company's near-term target is the
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). On the vaccine front, Profectus is trying to target HIV as it attempts to enter a cell. The company's therapies aim to cool the body's overheated immune system after it is infected with HIV. Profectus is a
spin-off from the
Institute of Human Virology and was created to commercialize its work.
Alvarez & Marsal Berardino is currently a managing director (since 2008) based in New York. Joe works with public companies in need of corporate transformation typically caused by disruptions to their historic business models. ==Affiliations==