Enron was originally a pipeline company in Houston, Texas in 1985. Enron became a company that was able to profit by providing deliveries of gas to utility companies and businesses. As the deregulation of electric power rose, Enron diversified the business and entered into an energy broker, which traded electricity and other types of commodities.
Enron employed several highly qualified PHDs in mathematics, physics, and economics. Enron continued to enter into contracts with customers and utilized a group of skilled employees to interpret, manage, and confine the high risks Enron was taking. Enron’s attempt to create a collection of partners that would permit employees to shift debt and losses off of the books would soon come to an
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The greatest disadvantage of the mark-to-market system is that once already in use by a company it is very hard for the company to change its direction of systems.
Enron had many SPE’s that it used to help defraud the company. Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF) created in the 1990’s help Enron maintain and conceal the SPE’s. EITF only required 3 percent of capital/assets to be contributed by independent external sources in order for a SPE to exist. Albrecht, a PhD in the AICPA (American Institution of Certified Public Accountants), states in his report:
EITF 90-15” (The 3% rule) Allowed corporations such as Enron to “not consolidate” if outsiders contributed even 3% of the capital (the other 97% could come from the company.) 90-15 was a license to create imaginary profits and hide genuine losses. FAS 57 require disclosure of these types of relationships (FAS 57 was proposed and implemented after the Enron scandal).
Enron had a $597 million dollar cash flow in the first half of year 2000 by taking loans out from banks such as Citigroup and Morgan- Chase totaling nearly 3.4 billion. Just in interests alone, Enron was collected 2 million dollars each day.
The damage incurred in the monetary form, was seen through the stockholders, employees, and other companies involved. Employee pension plans could not be paid, investors watched the stocks fall to $0.09 cents per
Enron took on the role of a ‘gas bank’ and started operations in 1989, where, it bought gas from suppliers and sold it to consumers, profiting from a fee charged for carrying out the transaction. The company flourished under the business model which impressed Lay, who then created a new division called Enron Finance Corp in 1990 and assigned Skilling to take charge of operations. Enron Finance Corp. soon dominated the market with more contacts and contracts with regard to suppliers and consumers compared to any of its competitors.
Enron executives used hundreds of SPE’s (special purpose entities) to arrange large and complex related party transactions that served to strengthen Enron’s reported financial condition and operating results.
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 used this loop hole and began to take many assets and liabilities off its balance sheet and into that of SPE’s, so as to be able to access more capital and significantly reduce its risks. It specifically used these SPE’s to borrow funds directly from outside lenders by supplying its own credit and using its high stock prices as guarantees. Enron took full advantage of accounting limitations in managing its earnings and balance sheet to portray a rosy picture of its performance.
The Enron corporation was an amalgamation of Houston Natural Gas and Internorth two of the largest natural gas suppliers in the United States. It was built upon the company 's ability to convince congress to deregulate the sale of natural gas through supplying electrical pieces at market prices. This allowed Enron to begin to sell power at higher prices therefore driving their revenue up. The company also began to spread its grasp out of natural gas and into a myriad of other power sources across the globe including water, pulp and paper plants. This was all done through a massive series of loopholes and massive amounts of money being funneled into Congress to lobby against regulations of such activities.
The story of Enron is truly remarkable. As a company it merely controlled the electricity, natural gas and communications sectors of the world. It reported (key word, reported) revenues over one hundred billion US dollars and was presented America’s Most Innovative Company by Fortune magazine for six sequential years. But, with power comes greed and Enron from its inception employed people who set their eyes upon money, prestige, power or a combination of the three. The gluttony took over sectors which the company could not operate proficiently nor successfully.
Growth for Enron was rapid. In 2000, the company 's annual revenue reached$100 billion US. It ranked as the seventh-largest company on the Fortune 500 and the sixth-largest energy company in the world. The company 's stock price peaked at $90 US.
Enron began as a pipeline company in Houston in 1985. It profited by promising to deliver so many cubic feet to a particular utility or business on a particular day at a market price.
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.
In 1985 Ken Lay took over a couple of big name gas pipeline companies that came together and thus the infamous Enron Corporation began. They offered a variety of services that were not limited to natural gas but also included electricity, communications, and many energy related services. Together, CEO Jeffrey Skilling, Chairman Ken Lay, and CFO Andrew Fastow were able to bring transformation to Enron. They created a multi-billion dollar Wall Street celebrity out of an electricity and gas company. There was an unusual growth spurt in Enron’s profit of about $69 billion from 1998 to 2000. This caught the attention of an anonymous
The use of special-purpose entities (SPEs) contributed to filing of bankruptcy by Enron, the largest in corporate
Enron was a U.S. based energy-trading company. At its height of operation in the early part of 2001, it was booking revenues of about $140 billion (Enron Ethics). At the end of 2001 it declared bankruptcy. The Enron bankruptcy was the largest corporate economic failure at that time, and still remains an example of how corrupt practices magnify in the long run. What led to Enron’s failure was primarily a lack of ethics, and poor accounting practices. This scandal was one of the reasons that new regulations were passed for financial reporting standards, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002 as a means of stopping such a collapse in the future.
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
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).
Investors were in love with Enron although they could not explain how Enron was profitable. A year before Enron declared bankruptcy Enron’s shares were trading in the NYSE for $85 dollars. Many of Enron’s employees were encouraged to purchase company stock and many of them did. Retirees made it part of their 401