MANAGEMENT CONSULTING Accenture Hoping To Raise $1.72 Billion With IPO.(INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY)

Byline: J. Bonasia

The world's largest tech consulting firm offers what one analyst calls the best hope to interject some life this summer into the sleepy initial public stock offering world.

Accenture, formerly Andersen Consulting, is on course to make its IPO on July 19, says a spokesman for co-lead underwriter Goldman Sachs Group. Accenture has filed to sell 115 million shares at $13 to $15 each. At the high end, this would bring in $1.72 billion, making it the fifth-largest IPO of the year. The stock will trade under the symbol ACN.

"This is the deal to watch this summer," said Jeff Hirschkorn of research firm IPO Monitor. "There's not much (new-offering) supply out there. Anybody who is important on the Street is getting a piece of this deal."

Accenture has long been one of the largest providers of tech services. Corporate customers hire Accenture to set up computer systems and to make computer systems work together.

The firm had taken a long road to the IPO. Like all the big accounting firms, Arthur Andersen built up a tech consulting practice in the 1980s. Arthur Andersen split off Andersen Consulting as a sister company in 1989.

As Andersen Consulting grew, so did conflicts with Arthur Andersen. And the Securities and Exchange Commission pressured some Big 5 accounting firms to spin off their consulting units to avoid potential conflicts of interest between their accounting and consulting practices.