Corporate Scandal : Enron Scandal

Companies like Global Crossing, Enron, and WorldCom have become famous examples of ethics gone wrong. Their false accounting, reporting, and insider trading cost people money, jobs and their retirement funds.

In my opinion the Enron scandal was one of the worst in American history. While we could argue many facets of the scandal the main talking point in my mind stems from the sheer level of corruption they managed to obtain. Which begs the question how far would the corruption have went had it not been for an insider blowing the whistle? It is estimated that Enron hid approximately 51.2 billion dollars worth of debt. They achieved this by utilizing several ingenious but unethical and illegal methods. However, the key to this scandal was the key involvement by the company which was supposed to be the watchdog. This is one of the major reasons SOX was created by the federal

WorldCom is one company that is known for their major ethical issue that took place in 2002. WorldCom had manipulated their earnings from 1999 to 2002, which presented the company as a growing company. The fraudulent papers allowed the business’s stock prices to rise, when they should have been falling. According to the textbook, “two techniques were used to cook the books. The first was underreporting ‘line costs’ by recording them as assets…the second was overstating revenues through recording fraudulent transactions” (p.177). In 2002, a group of auditors began to secretly investigating the company, and ultimately found $3.8 billion in fraud. According to an article written in the New York Times in 2002 by Simon Romero, “WorldCom, plagued by the rapid erosion of its profits and an accounting scandal that created billions in illusory earnings, last night submitted the largest bankruptcy filing in United States history.” The article goes on to say that the bankruptcy was expected to shake the telecommunications industry, and it would have an immediate impact on customers. The bankruptcy was also going to affect the shareholders that invest in a hundred-billion-dollar company. According to the textbook, “in, 2005, Bernie Ebbers was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy and for filing false documents with regulators. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The company did not portray Christian values in their decisions, because they were content with lying. If they had not been caught, they were planning to continue falsifying records, hoping they eventually would be able to repay the

In light of the recent scandals that rose around big multinationals such as Enron and WorldCom, it has become evident that reform in the traditional corporate operations and objectives was to be encompassed in the organisations corporate strategies. Indeed throughout the years, companies main objectives were defined primarily as being economic objectives, Multinationals developed with sight of profit maximisations regardless to the other incentives, Friedman considered that to be the foundation for a well-managed company, it was further considered that the financing of any other sort of social corporate activities rather unnecessary. The expenses were regarded as expenditures for the owners and investors; this was a time where shareholders rights were regarded as conflicting with other constituents namely the employees, creditors, customers or the community in general. However this interpretation is seen as rather inadequate due to the nature of the amalgamated relation between both constituents. Stakeholders in modern corporate doctrine are considered as a core apparatus for the well functioning of a business. It is however often argued that the only way for a corporation to achieve better results and maximise its profits is to include other people in the process, individuals or organisations with direct or indirect interest in the well performance of the company, that is the reason why modern regulations and codes include a number of stakeholders other than the

Executive Summary……………………………………………………………..3 (I) Introduction to the Enron case and the organizations involved……. 5 Background information & industry…………………………………………….. 5 Organizations and officers involved……………………………………………..6 Accounting firm and partners involved………………………………………….8 Enron’s industry………………………………………………………………….. 9 Enron’s injured parties…………………………………………………………… 10 (II) Enron’s accounting fraud and misrepresentation……………………. 11 Explanation of the fraud…………………………………………………………. 11 Damages incurred…………………………………………………………………12 Final outcome of the Case………………………………………………………. 13 How the

#1. The segment that put Enron in difficulties was the LJM1. That SPE was the worst of all four SPE’s. This one had no independant investor that could put up the 3% that they needed for the controlling investor, where CHEWCO would work as a counterparty accounting to the U>S> guidelines. Enron already owned 97% of CHEWCO, where if they had a controlling investor, the profits from CHEWCO would go directly to Enron’s assets. Later, they did not find a controller investor, and invented another SPE, which was LJM2. The problems in LJM1 still was there that affected LJM2. Arthur Anderson, the auditor for Enron, went ahead and approved of this SPE, knowing that the financial statements had

Enron Corporation used the symbol of ENE referring to an American energy, commodities, and services. The head office been established in Houston. Enron revenues of nearly $111 billion during 2000.Fortune named Enron "America's Innovative org" for six consecutive years up to Dec 2.2011 and they hired not less than 20,000 employees as it was one of the world's leader of electricity, natural gas, communications and paper companies.

In every single accounting or ethics class, the “Enron Scandal” as a lot might say is brought up to teach all the students a lesson about ethics and how regulations in the accounting world were enacted. The “Enron Scandal” dealt with two parties, first Enron itself, and then their auditors Arthur Andersen. Enron used to be one of the most innovative companies in the world, and Arthur Andersen was the biggest professional services company in the world, so when they both fell after the so called “scandal” it completely changed the world of Accounting. The road to multi-million dollar companies failing is a big one so how exactly did it happen. It all had to do with the way Enron and Arthur Andersen were run and changed which ended up in the demise of both companies.

Enron Corporation was an energy company founded in Omaha, Nebraska. The corporation chose Houston, Texas to home its headquarters and staffed about 20,000 people. It was one of the largest natural gas and electricity providers in the United States, and even the world. In the 1990’s, Enron was widely considered a highly innovative, financially booming company, with shares trading at about $90 at their highest points. Little did the public know, the success of the company was a gigantic lie, and possibly the largest example of white-collar crime in the history of business.

Ethics in the business world can often times become a second priority behind the gaining of profits and success as a company. This is the controversial issue that led to the Enron scandal and ultimately the fall of this company. Enron Corporation was an energy company, and in the peaks of their success, they were the top supplier of natural gas and electricity throughout America. Enron Corporation came about from a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth. Houston Natural Gas was a gas providing company formed in Houston during the 1920’s. InterNorth was a company formed in Nebraska during the 1930’s and owned one of America’s largest pipeline networks. In 1985, Sam Segnar, the CEO of InterNorth bought out Houston Natural Gas for $2.4 billion. A year later in 1986, Segnar retired and was replaced by Kenneth Lay, who renamed the company and created Enron. Enron was the owner of the second largest pipeline in America that measured over 36,000 miles. The company was also the creator of the “Gas Bank”, which was a new way to trade and market natural gas and served as an intermediary between buyers and sellers. As the company continued to develop, it became more of a trader rather than a producer of gas. This trading extended into coal, steel, water and many other areas. One of Enron’s largest successes was their creation of a website called, “Enron Online” in 1999, which quickly became one of the top trading cites in the world. By the year 2000 Enron as a company was

Years ago, a series of financial frauds and collapses was occurs in United States. Includes Enron, Global Crossing, Worldcom, Healthsouth, AIG and Lehman Brothers scandals. In the American capital market, the investors abandoned a number of large listed companies leads to the bankruptcy for those companies. The corporate frauds not only deceive investors, but also make oneself paid a heavy price. At the same time, it not only harm the capital market, but also caused a significant impact on American that resulted in regulation changes. These purpose of corporate fraud and reason are different, which Enron’s financial fraud is typical event and influence accounting filed lots. Because Enron is the beginning of the series of financial frauds in American, and secondly is form growth to the bankruptcy of Enron, has attracted American media and public, the third reason is Enron’s event also lead to the world top five accounting firm Arthur Anderson collapses.

Most of the world has heard of Enron, the American, mega-energy company that “cooked their books” ( ) and cost their investors billions of dollars in lost earnings and retirement funds. While much of the controversy surrounding the Enron scandal focused on the losses of investors, unethical practices of executives and questionable accounting tactics, there were many others within close proximity to the turmoil. It begs the question- who was really at fault and what has been done to prevent it from happening again?

Kenneth Lay, former chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Enron Corp., claimed to be a moral and ethical leader and exhorted Enron’s officers and employees to be highly ethical in their decisions and actions. In addition, the Enron Code of Ethics specified that “An employee shall not conduct himself or herself in a manner which directly or indirectly would be detrimental to the best interests of the Company or in a manner which would bring to the employee financial gain separately derived as a direct consequence of his or her employment with the Company.” Enron’s ethics code was based on the values of respect, integrity, communication, and excellence. Given this code of conduct and Ken Lay’s professed commitment to business ethics,

WorldCom was once the second largest telecommunication company in the United States. Currently, the company is known for its enormous accounting scandal from 2002, which led to the company filing for bankruptcy protection. WorldCom executives were able to falsify the company’s accounting figures by inflating the company’s assets by almost $13-billion dollars. The fallout after the company filed for bankruptcy led to huge losses for investors, but also for employees and retailers. The scandal is one of the worst corporate accounting crimes in U.S. history, leading to some of its former executives held personally responsible. WorldCom executives instructed accountants to inflate assets by as much as $11 billion dollars, which led to 30,000 in layoffs and a loss of about $180 billion for its investors.

In the history of accounting, "Enron scandal" means more than just a legend of accounting managements. It exceeds every other accountings deceit, because the need to secrete its real economic situation was not just a matter of hiding failures borne out of unsuccessful business protrusions. In our summary of the ten major accounting scandals that altered the business world, Enron led the set of white collar crimes committed out of pure gluttony (McLean & Peter, 2003).