Houston ? Arthur Andersen LLP, the world’s fifth-largest accounting firm, will halt auditing public companies by the end of August, the result of a conviction for destroying evidence in a federal investigation of Enron Corp.

A Securities and Exchange Commission rule bars any firm convicted of a felony from auditing publicly traded companies, so the guilty verdict returned by a federal court in Houston on Saturday dealt the final blow for Andersen.

“Now maybe the industry will behave itself and not destroy evidence,” said Neil McCabe, a professor at South Texas College of Law, a private Houston law school. “It sends out a message to other business corporations that if you see litigation coming, you don’t get to shred a bunch of documents to protect yourself.”

The SEC said it was “deeply troubled” by Andersen’s conduct and that it would monitor closely any public companies that are having their financial statements audited by Andersen until the firm stops operating at the end of August.

“We have an obligation to protect investors,” the SEC said.

Enron was not Andersen’s first bookkeeping scandal. The worldwide accounting and consulting firm had been in trouble previously for irregularities involving Sunbeam Corp., Waste Management Inc. and the Baptist Foundation of Arizona.

“A lot of people around here are very sympathetic to them. I’m not,” McCabe said. “They got away with other criminal activity in the past by paying a fine.”

It’s been obvious for weeks that Andersen was unlikely to survive being embroiled in this regardless of the outcome.

A rescue effort led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker failed after Andersen executives failed to reach a settlement. The firm has lost about 700 clients, most overseas operations and about 60 percent of its U.S. work force.

“The verdict in and of itself doesn’t change anything,” said Art Bowman, editor of Bowman’s Accounting Report. “The incident itself is changing everything.”