KPMG Changes Name To BearingPoint

BearingPoint officials tomorrow will open trading on the New York Stock Exchange. BearingPoint's symbol will be BE.

According to a company statement, more than 500 names were considered before BearingPoint was chosen.

BearingPoint employs 16,000 people and reported 2001 revenue of $2.9 billion. Rand Blazer remains chairman and chief executive.

The name change reflects the desire of the consulting arms of the former Big Five accounting firms to distance themselves from Andersen Consulting, whose implosion after alleged accounting improprieties for clients such as Enron tarnished the entire sector.

Andersen provided the energy giant and other clients with both consulting and accounting services, which industry observers say represented a huge conflict of interest.

Consulting firm Accenture split off from Andersen's accounting business in 2000.

In February, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu said it would separate Deloitte Consulting from the rest of its business. The news followed similar decisions from Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

PricewaterhouseCoopers' own consulting spin-off, PwC Consulting, spent millions of dollars to change its name to "Monday" just before being acquired by IBM in July.