Photo courtesy Gary Kuwahara

No one has used the reforms to his advantage more than Wade Downey (B.S. accounting, 1992). A senior manager with Deloitte & Touche in the immediate aftermath of Enron, Downey recognized how Sarbanes-Oxley would change the landscape of specialized accounting services by requiring greater independence for the world’s largest companies avoiding conflicts of interest. Previously, Fortune 500 companies had turned to the big consulting and accounting firms such as Andersen for such most accounting and audit services, but there was an inherent conflict of interest because of these firms’ work as business consultants as well.

“Before Enron, if you had a need for tax, audit, consulting, whatever, you went to your accounting firm and they sent someone out. Done deal. But right after the scandals broke, it became immediately more difficult to serve clients at Deloitte because many of them were saying, ‘I’d rather go to some firm where there’s overtly no conflict of interest,’” says Downey. Recognizing a new opportunity in the industry’s landscape, Downey left his job to start Downey, Smith & Fier with three partners as a tax firm specializing in state sales and use tax. The firm celebrates its fifth anniversary this month.

“My firm exists because of Enron and Arthur Andersen and all this reform. We’re incredibly specialized in what we do, but that’s really our competitive advantage – we don’t have a conflict of interest. Today, a 15-man shop in Lakewood, Calif. like mine can serve the largest companies in the world because there’s no conflict. That’s a huge change from five years ago,” he says.

Downey suggests that auditing fees have quadrupled because of the number of new regulations and forms that must be completed as a result of the act and that the need for independent auditors has increased ten-fold. That demand has led to a trickle down effect in all of accounting with trained professionals spread across a larger landscape, meaning more and better opportunities across the board from small firms such as Downey’s to the Big Four accounting firms, who have also adapted with their industry’s changing landscape.

The people who may benefit the most then from accounting’s resurgence are students graduating with appropriate degrees. “Five years ago, some of our graduates might have looked for a job for an entire semester after completing their degree. Now, they’re getting hired right away,” says Mohammed El-Badawi, professor and chair of accounting and finance.

Arek Arakelian (M.B.A. concentration in finance, 2006) is one such recent graduate, who became a full-time accountant with Gumbiner-Savett based in Santa Monica last fall after interning with the firm. In the six months leading up to his full-time appointment, he estimates the firm’s staff grew by 20 percent. “When I was looking for a job last year at job fairs, everyone I spoke with said, ‘this is your time.’ It seems like every firm was expanding their recruiting, and I definitely felt fortunate to be in that situation. I had other friends who graduated with me but in other fields and they were not having as easy of a time,” says Arakelian. 

In addition to more opportunities, accountants are being offered better benefits and higher salaries as well. Of course, for those on the employer-side of that equation, that’s not such a great thing. Last summer, El-BadawiI went to a recruiting fair in Washington, D.C., hoping to fill two accounting faculty positions. There were 65 candidates available with 135 schools chasing them.

Still, the overall sense of accounting’s resurgence is a good thing for everyone, including and possibly especially at highly regarded programs like CBAPP’s where opportunities abound. Students are getting better jobs, and the student-run Accounting Society has been more active than ever, bringing speakers from the industry to campus and actively boosting the program’s image with area recruiters. And then there are alumni such as Downey, who have taken a potentially negative situation and turned it into an unprecedented personal opportunity. All told, it makes now a very good time to be an accountant.

“This industry is 1,000 times stronger than it was five years ago,” concludes Downey.