ENRON and Faudulent Record Keeping Practices

Enron was an energy trading and communications company located in Houston, Texas. During 1996-2001 Enron was given the name of America’s Most Innovative Company by Fortune magazine as it was the seventh-largest corporation in the US. The problem that led this company to bankruptcy was due to the fact that fraudulent accounting practices took place allowing Enron to overstate their earnings and tuck away their high debt liabilities in order to have a more appealing balance sheet (Forbes.com, 2002). Enron’s accounting team “cooked” the books to every meaning of the word so that their investors would not see anything wrong with the failing organization. This poorly structured company led people to jail time, unemployment, and caused retirement stocks to be dried up. Enron had a social responsibility to its stockholders and rather than being up front and honest about the failing company they hid every financial flaw in order to keep receiving money from its investors. By Enron not keeping a social

Enron had the largest bankruptcy in America’s history and it happened in less than a year because of scandals and manipulation Enron displayed with California’s energy supply. A few years ago, Enron was the world’s 7th largest corporation, valued at 70 billion dollars. At that time, Enron’s business model was full of energy and power. Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling had raised Enron to stand on a culture of greed, lies, and fraud, coupled with an unregulated accounting system, which caused Enron to go down. Lies were being told by top management to the government, its employees and investors. There was a rise in Enron 's share price because of pyramid scheme; their strategy consisted of claiming so much money to easily get away with their tricky ways. They deceived their investors so they could keep investing their money in the company.

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

The word “fraud” was magnified in the business world around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. No one had seen anything like it. Enron, one of the country’s largest energy companies, went bankrupt and took down with it Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit and accounting firms in the world. Enron was followed by other accounting scandals such as WorldCom, Tyco, Freddie Mac, and HealthSouth, yet Enron will always be remembered as one of the worst corporate accounting scandals of all time. Enron’s collapse was brought upon by the greed of its corporate hierarchy and how it preyed upon its faithful stockholders and employees who invested so much of their time and money into the company. Enron seemed to portray that the goal of corporate America was to drive up stock prices and get to the peak of the financial mountain by any means necessary. The “Conspiracy of Fools” is a tale of power, crony capitalism, and company greed that lead Enron down the dark road of corporate America.

The time frame is early 2002, and the news breaks worldwide. The collapse of corporate giants in America amidst fraud and stock manipulations surfaces. Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth and later Adelphia are all suspected of the highest level of fraud, accounting manipulation, and unethical behavior. This is a dark time in history of Corporate America. The FBI and the CIA are doing investigations on all of these companies as it relates to unethical account practices, and fraud emerges. Investigations found that Enron, arguably the most well-known, had long shredding sessions of important documents and gross manipulation of stocks and bonds. This company alone caused one of the biggest economic

In the summer of 2001, questions began to arise about the integrity of Houston energy company Enron’s financial statements. In December, they filed for bankruptcy as their fraud came to light and the United States government froze all of their assets and began prosecuting their executives and their external auditing firm Arthur Anderson (Franzel 2014). Enron was not the only company using accounting loopholes to mislead stockholders though; Global Crossing, Tyco, Aldephia, WorldCom, and Waste Management all underwent investigation for similar

a. Stockholders at first reaped tremendous gains from their investments in Enron stock, because the company’s value rose a lot of quicker than market averages throughout the late Nineteen Nineties. In 2001, because the stock value folded, investors lost $70 billion in value. Each individual and institutional shareholders were hurt. Significantly blasted were Enron workers whose 401(k) retirement plans were heavily endowed in their company’s stock. Even shareholders who failed to own any Enron stock were hurt, as stock costs fell across the board within the wake of the scandal as investors doubted the integrity of the many companies’ monetary reports.

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’s fraudulent financial practices lead to the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002. Mistakes made by the company and their leadership shocked the world and cost billions. Enron’s leadership could have taken steps to prevent or mitigate the repercussions of their actions. The act restored ethical and reliable financial practices to the market.The major provisions of the act made corporations responsibility for financial reports, and required internal and external audits. The Act changed the accounting regulatory environment. And although corporations incurred the additional expense of audit and new reporting standards, these changes restored consumer investing confidence, strengthening the corporations and the stock market overall. (Flanigan, 2002.)

The agencies not only discovered the complex web of fictitious partnerships that hid Enron’s massive debt but also that the company’s external accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, was creating materially false and misleading audit reports. . The true nature of Enron’s massive financial losses was shown to the public and the stock price plunged, causing investors to lose billions of dollars. Enron, however, was just the first and largest scandal to become public. Numerous companies including Tyco, WorldCom, and Kmart were found to have inflated earnings (Martin & Combs, 2010, 103). Investors had been manipulated to invest into companies that followed unethical business practice thereby shattering future investor confidence.

In the documentary video, Bethany McLean stated that Enron’s Financial Statements does not makes sense; “the company was producing little cash flow, and debt is rising”. Fraud was present. “The company's lack of accuracy in reporting its financial affairs, followed by financial restatements disclosing billions of dollars of omitted liabilities and losses, contributed to its downfall”(Effects of Enron, 2005). This is dishonesty at its best in accounting world.

Even the small profits reported by Enron in 2000 were eventually determined to be only a illusion by court-appointed bankruptcy examiner Neal Batson. Batson’s report reveals that over 95% of the reported profits in these two years were attributed to Enron’s misuse of MTM and other accounting techniques. But while financial analysts could not be expected to know that the company illegally manipulated the earnings, the reported profit margins in 2000 were so low and were declining so steadily that they should have merited ample skepticism from analysts about the company’s profits.

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.

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).