Case Study: Accounting for Enron

In 1985 The Enron Corporation came into existence after a successful merger between two gas pipeline companies. The company nurtured a very competitive culture, which encouraged employees to win at any means necessary. Enron’s culture led employees to “cast loyalty and ethics aside in favor of high performance” (Ferrell, p. 494). The executives of Enron covered up their increasing debt by using special purpose entities. Meanwhile, Enron continued to report increasing profits to their investors, which led to more investors giving Enron their money. There were many factors that aided Enron in their demise, but the largest was the greed of Enron’s executives, the auditors, and the attorneys. The corporate culture of Enron, their auditors bankers and attorneys and their Chief Financial Officer played vital roles in the fall of Enron.

This now bankrupt company, misappropriated investments, pension funds, stock options and saving plans after deregulation and little oversight by the federal government. However, with deregulation an increasing competitive culture emerged as the CEO Jeffry Skilling motto to his organization was to “do it right, do it now, and do it better” this was the rally cried that pushed ambitious employees to engage in unethical behavior as Enron use deceptive “accounting methods to maintain its investment grade status” (Sims, & Brinkmann, 2003, pp.244-245). As Enron continued to flourish and received accolades from the business community this recognition drove executives to continue the façade of bending ethical guidelines before their public fall from

Finance and accounting remain the core of the Enron story, but the company's cowboy culture -- and the way top bosses such as Mr. Fastow and former Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling inspired it -- are also key to understanding what happened in this historic business debacle. Only now is the full scope becoming apparent, amid government probes and a growing willingness by some former and current employees to speak about it.

It was 13 years ago that the announcement of bankruptcy by Enron Corporation, an American energy, commodities and service firm at the time, would unravel a scandal resulting in what is regarded as the most multifaceted white-collar crime FBI investigation conducted in history. High-ranking officials at the Houston-based company swindled investors and managed to further their own wealth through intricate, shifty accounting practices such as listing assets above their true value to increase cash inflows and earnings statements. This had the effect of making the company and its shares look more enticing than they really were to potential investors. Upon their declaration of negative net worth in December 2001, shareholders filed a $40 billion lawsuit against the company, citing a drop of shares from around $90 per share to around $1 per share within only a few months. In light of these events, officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SCE) were prompted to initiate further investigation to figure out how such a drastic loss occurred.

The focus of the corporation soon changed direction once it was realized that investing in selling intangible assets on the market could provide easier and higher revenue returns. This type of trading on the open stock market, with little regulations is what allowed the infamous criminal acts to take place and led to one of the world’s worst bankruptcy cases in United States history. An investigation finally occurred when investors found suspicious stock prices increasing exponentially and a whistleblower raised concern that finally revealed the fraudulent operations of Enron’s top executives conspiring with multiple businesses.

Enron was a publicly traded energy company formed in 1985 by Kenneth Lay when Internorth acquired Houston Natural Gas; the company, based in Houston Texas, Enron (originally entitled “EnterOn”, but was later subjected to abbreviation), worked specifically in power, natural gas, and paper and even ventured into various non-energy-based fields as they expanded, including: Internet bandwidth, risk management, and weather derivatives. Several years after the founding of the company, Enron hired a man by the name of Jeffrey Skilling, a former chemical and energy consultant, who, upon promotion, created a team of high-level administrative employees who, by using special purpose entities, lackluster reporting of finances, and unethical accounting practices, hid billions of dollars of debt from unsuccessful arrangements and ventures from stock holders and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Enron executives achieved this scheme by using a controversial accounting method entitled “mark-to-market accounting,” which in essence, assigns value to financial commodities based on their projected market values; mark-to-market accounting is the opposite of cost-based accounting which records the price of a commodity at the purchase price. As a result of this new method, Enron’s worth skyrocketed to over $70 billion at one time, only to collapse miserably several years later—ultimately costing thousands upon thousands of people their jobs, pensions, and retirements. Enron’s employees

Enron’s executives had large expense accounts and were compensated far beyond the competitors within the industry. Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron, received over $250 million in compensation from the company over his 17 years with the company. Enron’s culture of arrogance resulted in a two year increase in fictitious revenue of nearly $70 billion from 1998 to 2000. Executives’ compensation within Enron’s energy services division was based on a market valuation formula that was influenced by internal estimates which created a pressure to inflate contracts despite having no effect on the generation of cash flow. Skilling introduced a policy in which the employees ranked in the bottom 20% of the company were forced to leave (Mclean, Varchaver, Helyar, Revell, and Sung, 2001). This created a competitive atmosphere internally and, in many cases, caused the workers to ignore potential errors and

Enron’s annual stockholder meeting in January 2001 was a study in corporate egotism. Executives met at a San Antonio, Texas hill country resort, and champagne and cigars were free for the taking. At this meeting, Lay boldly asserted that he expected Enron to become “the world’s greatest company.” On February 5, special bonus checks worth tens of millions of dollars were prepared for Enron executives. However, in what might have been the first outward sign of the trouble to come, Lay resigned as CEO in February 2001, keeping his position as chairman of the board, while Skilling was tapped to be his replacement.

Corporate malfeasance has earned a place among the defining themes of the last decade and a half, helping to give birth to the global recession and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Enron, a Houston based commodities, energy, and service corporation, created arguably one of the worst scandals of the past two decades. Due to reporting tactics implemented by Chief Executive Officer Ken Law and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Skilling, which hid huge debts from the company’s balance sheet, the company filed for bankruptcy, shareholders lost $74 billion, thousands of employees and investors lost their retirement accounts, and many employees lost their jobs. Before the accounting scandal became public in 2001 due to whistleblower and Vice President

This would be led largely by the enormous profitability experienced by swelling corporate entities and multinational conglomerates. And at the height of this period of economic dynamism, it did appear that these corporate entities were leading the charge toward a new national prosperity. Sadly, the decade immediately thereafter would prove much of this unbridled success to be manufactured and much of the profit to be totally false. Faulty accounting practices would be revealed as a most insidious culprit as a mountain of corporate scandals became apparent in the early 2000s. Certainly, none of these accounting scandals was quite as visible as the collapse of Enron and its accounting partner, Arthur Andersen. The events of 2002 would begin the uncovering of a world of malfeasant practices and would demonstrate the need for far greater transparent, oversight and legislative intervention. The discussion here considers the accounting system at Enron and how this produced an environment where fraud, embezzlement and deception were a part of the company culture.

Enron, a provider of natural gas, electricity, and communications began when two large gas pipeline companies merged together in 1985. CEO Jeffrey Skilling, CFO Andrew Fastow, and Chairman Ken Lay worked diligently throughout the 1990s to build the company to be the largest most successful of its time. Having its name in Wall Street was becoming a norm for the company as it grew beyond all hopes and expectations. The company had become unstoppable as shares increased and partnerships became stronger. Believing so much in the company Business Ethics states, “Jeffrey Skilling went so far as to tell utility executives at a conference he was going to “eat their lunch” (Farrell, Fraedrich,

Enron began as an energy company in 1985. After the deregulation of oil and gas in the U.S., Enron lost its’ exclusive rights to natural gas pipelines. The CEO, Kenneth Lay then hired a consulting firm to reinvent the company in order to make up lost profits. He hired Jeffery Skilling, who was in banking, specifically; asset and liability management. Under the topic “The Beginning Presages the End”, C. William Thomas (2002) writes: “Thanks to the young consultant, the company created both a new product and a new paradigm for the industry—the energy derivative.” When Skilling’s plans were very profitable, he was promoted to COO of the trading division. With this success, he hired Andrew Fastow; who became CFO Chief

Enron’s management style was apparent from the early years of the organization. In 1987, traders in New York manipulated transactions so it would appear as though volume was higher. Falsified transactions significantly increased the traders’ bonus pay out. A truly virtuous

As competition increased and the economy started to plunge in the early 2000s, Enron struggled to maintain their profit margins. Executives determined that in order to keep their debt ratio low, they would need to transfer debt from their balance sheet. “Reducing hard assets while earning increasing paper profits served to increase Enron’s return on assets (ROA) and reduce its debt-to-total-assets ratio, making the company more attractive to credit rating agencies and investors” (Thomas, 2002). Executives developed Structured Financing and Special Purpose Entities (SPE), which they used to transfer the majority of Enron’s debt to the SPEs. Enron also failed to appropriately disclose information regarding the related party transactions in the notes to the financial statements.Andersen performed audit work for Enron and rendered an unqualified opinion of their financial statements while this activity occurred. The seriousness and amount of misstatement has led some to believe that Andersen must have known what was going on inside Enron, but decided to overlook it. Assets and equities were overstated by over $1.2 billion, which can clearly be considered a material amount (Cunningham & Harris, 2006). These are a few of several practices that spiraled out of control in an effort to meet forecasted quarterly earnings. As competition grew against the energy giant and their

The story of Enron begins in 1985, with the merger of two pipeline companies, orchestrated by a man named Kenneth L. Lay (1). In its 15 years of existence, Enron expanded its operations to provide products and services in the areas of electricity, natural gas as well as communications (9). Through its diversification, Enron would become known as a corporate America darling (9) and Fortune Magazine’s most innovative company for 5 years in a row (10). They reported extraordinary profits in a short amount of time. For example, in 1998 Enron shares were valued at a little over $20, while in mid-2000, those same shares were valued at just over $90 (10), the all-time high during the company’s existence (9).