Enron, An Energy Trading Supply Company Essay

A question asked by Bethany McLean, a reporter for Fortune Magazine, in 2001 was “how does Enron make its money?” (Mclean) This, a quite straightforward question, was something that the executives refused to answer, citing confidentiality. Jeffery Skilling agreed to join Enron as CEO on the condition that the use of use mark-to-marketing (MTM) accounting would be allowed. Arthur Andersen, the companies accounting firm, and the SEC signed off on it, and Skilling joined the company in 1990 (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). This type of accounting values an asset based on its current market

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.

1.     Ken Lay served as CEO and chairman and Jeffrey Skilling also served as CEO. They both were responsible for planning, organizing, controlling and leading the company. They set goals for the company and organized how they would be achieved. Kay’s role was as the figurehead and the leader. He also served as the spokesperson for the company and made many of the decision on the future of the company. As CEO’s they both possessed effective communication skills, where decisive, which was evidenced by their vision for the company and refusal to admit wrong even at the end, and visionary. Throughout Lay’s tenor the company continued to grow and prosper at a fast

Enron, based in Houston, Texas, was founded by Kenneth Lay as an energy and pipeline company in 1985 from the merger of two natural gas pipeline companies, Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth. The impetus for Lay to start Enron was the deregulation of the natural gas market in the mid 1980’s, which relaxed the rules on natural gas prices and allowed for more flexible agreements between natural gas producers and pipeline managers. These changes essentially eliminated the practice of using long-term contracts between producers and suppliers in the industry and allowed for prices to fluctuate more freely. The price setting model that resulted is known as “spot pricing”. This was a big advantage for Enron, which at the time owned the largest network of interstate pipeline in the US.

Enron conducted several fraudulent record keeping practices to keep mounting debt off their financial statements. Initially, Enron kept complex financial statements that were confusing to both its shareholders and analysts. This was the first step to cover-up and misinterpret its debt and earnings. However, as Enron’s practice grew and became more involved, Jeffrey Skilling pressured other Enron executives to “…create off-balance-sheet vehicles, complex financing structures, and deals so bewildering that few people could understand them.” (Elkind and

Enron was formed in 1986 by Ken Lay (“Enron Case Study”, n.d). It was an energy and service company based in Houston. “The early years of Enron were modest, and despite suffering financial woes and tremendous debt for several years, Enron survived.” (Rafraf & Haug, 2013). Enron was the 7th largest company on the Fortune 500 in the year 2000 with assets of $65 billion and revenue of over $100 billion (“Enron: Quality Assurance”, 2016, p 17). Despite of revenues in 2000, Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001 affecting billions of shareholders. The Enron collapsed despite of being audited by one of the “Big Five” accounting firms called Arthur Anderson. What caused the Enron failure? What was Arthur Anderson’s role in Enron’s failure? Enron had

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.

All of the prior represents the business side of the downfall of Enron. That being said, businesses fail all of the time. The reason why Enron Corporation and its executives will always live in infamy is not because the company failed, but how and why the company failed. How, exactly, does a company worth about $70 million collapse in less than a month? It became clear that the company not only had financial problems, but ethical problems that started from the top of the company and trickled down. A key player in these problems was Jeffrey Skilling. He was a man brought to the company by Ken Lay himself. Skilling brought his own accounting concept to the company. It was called mark-to-market accounting. This concept allowed Enron to record potential profits the day a deal was signed. This meant that the company could report whatever they “thought” profits from the deal were going to be and count the number towards actual profits, even if no money actually came in. Mark-to-market accounting granted Enron the power to report major profits to the public, even if they were little or even negative. It became a major way

Enron was a corporation that reached heights unknown, only to watch it fall apart from the inside out based on a foundation of falsehoods and cheating. Enron established a business culture that flourished on competition and was perceived in society as an arrogant corporation, mainly because of its corporate leadership. The fairytale of Enron actually ended as a nightmare with it destroyed by one of America’s largest bankruptcies in history. The demise of Enron impacted the livelihood and futures of numerous employees, their pensions, and in due course impacted Wall Street in a significant way. Even people today are amazed at how such a powerful company met its demise so rapidly. Enron’s end was a product of greed when certain executives of Enron were not eager to accept the failure of their company. The company utilized mark-to-market accounting that detailed the projected impending profits from a long-term deal (Lawry, 2015, p. 28) The results of the deals did not generate revenue as anticipated, but tremendous loss instead. This resulted in Enron accumulating enormous amounts of debt that they attempted to keep classified from the public. Ultimately the truth came to fruition.

Enron was an admired company prior to 2000 because at that time it surfaced as a frontrunner in the deregulated energy market, making it possible to sell energy at higher prices, thus significantly increasing its revenue. The company, through efficient management team, has built leading businesses in energy trading and international energy asset construction. The company has managed to maintain high return from its investments through ideal placement of resources by creating long term and fixed price contracts with clients that guaranteed stable

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).

Enron was founded in July of 1985. Enron was an electricity and natural gas company which was a fortune 500 company and it was ranked the sixth largest energy company in the world. Enron’s stock went from a peak of $90.75 to $0.67. This was very detrimental to stockholders. Enron’s top executives sold their stock a long time before the stock price fell. A lot of lower level employees could not sell their stock because of deals they made with the company. This later caused a lot of these employees to lose their life savings and everything they had worked for. Enron used a very complex accounting method to trick the stock market. This method was called “mark to market” accounting. Enron used this method of accounting to predict and project their earnings in a long term period. These earnings were projected based on the long term energy contracts Enron was going to make. This could have been money that was not made at that point. This made Enron’s stock price skyrocket at a very fast pace, making a lot of employees and general public invest in the stock. Enron stock seemed to be a very secure and profitable investment which would make people lots of money. The Fortune 500 company went down very quickly. In August of 2001, the CEO of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling resigned. He randomly resigned and a lot of suspicions arose. His resignation was described to be because of personal reasons.

It is widely known that the influence along with the clearly exhibited leadership styles by Skilling who first served as the COO (Chief Operating Officer) and later went on to become the CEO, played a definitive role in leading the company to bankruptcy. According to Seabury, 2011, Skilling had a way of concealing financial loses of the company by adopting the marl to market accounting practice. Skillings also hired Andrew Fastow who created (SPE) Special Purpose Entities. SPEs were used to conceal low performing assets and to keep these off Enron’s financial books. SPEs were then compensated through shares in Enron.

The leading factor that had Enron into its demise revolves around the notion that, “companies are often so concerned with appearance and damage control that they are unwilling to engage in the degree of examination required to root out the entrenched causes of trust violations” (Hurley, Gillespie, Ferrin & Dietz, 2013). The historical performance of Enron’s rising share prices, coupled to the constant positive media attentions, only added fuel to the fire in terms of Enron’s competitive culture. As a consequence of these external factors, Enron’s top management felt the need to be able to sustain their image of rapid growth, since negative balances on their financial reports would have been an indication to investors that Enron may not be as successful as it appeared after all, leading to possible negative repercussions towards their overall performance, and potentially inevitably lead to its ill-fated downfall. Therefore to prolong their fate, Enron employed the use of highly questionable accounting methods and the use of deceiving partnerships, such as SPE’s (Special Purpose Entities), with the aim to create a façade that they’re highly successful by shrouding losses, falsifying profits and to conceal debt amounts.

Enron was once one of the world 's leading energy companies by reshaping the way natural gas and electricity were bought and sold. They filed the largest corporate bankruptcy in American history in 2001. Enron Corporation was an energy company running out of Texas that was started when two companies, Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, merged together in 1985. By 1992, Enron became the largest seller of natural gas in North America and began to offer other services like wholesaler trading and risk management. The company’s popularity and profitability continued to increase throughout the 90s and in 2000 was named number 7 on the fortune 500 list bringing in over 100 billion dollars of revenue. Enron shares were worth $90.75 at their peak in August 2000 and dropped to $0.67 in January 2002. Enron announced a third quarter loss of $618 million on October 16, 2001. A couple days later, the SEC opened a formal investigation into Enron’s transactions (Link 2). What caused this shocking fall of Enron? The fall of Enron was caused primarily by the following three factors; the systemic failure by the Securities and Exchange Commission, hiring auditors who were already affiliated with the company, and violating a code of ethics.