Arthur Young Accountant and Lincoln Employee
Jack Atchison was the managing partner of the Phoenix office at Arthur Young, one of (what was then) the "big eight" U.S. accounting firms. While working at Arthur Young, he conducted a number of American Continental Corporation's external audits during the 1980s and penned the famous Arthur Young letter, which outlined the reasons for his belief that the San Francisco regulators abused Lincoln S&L, an apparently viable institution.
Many of the senators and their aides cited this letter as a major motivation to contact Gray and to inquire about the Bank Board’s exam on Keating’s behalf. In hearings on the collapse of Lincoln before the House Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs just prior to the Keating Five ones in the Senate, Mr. Atchison refused to testify on the basis of his Fifth Amendment rights.
In 1990, Keating hired Atchison away from Arthur Young for an annual salary of approximately $930,000.