Enron : An Overview Of The Corporation Essay

Greg Whalley, (former Enron President and Chief Operation Officer) had six to eight conversations last fall with the Treasury’s Department Peter Fisher, including one in which he asked Fisher to call Enron’s lenders as they decided whether to extend credit to the company.

Enron, the natural gas provider turned trader of natural gas commodities and in 1994, electric, was once touted as the seventh largest company in America. Kenneth Lay, founder, began changing Enron from just a provider into a financial energy powerhouse. Lay took advantage of the dot-com boom of the late 1990’s by creating Enron Online, an internet trading platform. Internet stocks were valued at astronomical prices and were all the rage on wall street, who accepted the increasing prices as normal (Investopedia). On December 2, 2001 Enron declared chapter 11 bankruptcy, resulting in the loss of twenty thousand jobs and billions of investor and creditor dollars. Enron, once designated as "America 's Most Innovative Company" by Fortune for six years consecutively, enacted massive financial fraud at the fault of its top level executives: Kenneth Lay, Jeffery Skilling, and Andrew Fastow.

Ray Bowen, a Citigroup banker at the time and now Enron's chief financial officer, once asked Mr. [Andrew Fastow] about a batch of complex equations that filled a whiteboard in the conference room next to the Mr. Fastow's office. "You can't tell me you understand those equations," Mr. Bowen commented to Mr. Fastow. Mr. Fastow replied: "I pulled them out of a book to intimidate people."

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.

Enron’s ride is quite a phenomenon: from a regional gas pipeline trader to the largest energy trader in the world, and then back down the hill into bankruptcy and disgrace. As a matter of fact, it took Enron 16 years to go from about $10 billion of assets to $65 billion of assets, and 24 days to go bankruptcy. Enron is also one of the most celebrated business ethics cases in the century. There are so many things that went wrong within the organization, from all personal (prescriptive and psychological approaches), managerial (group norms, reward system, etc.), and organizational (world-class culture) perspectives. This paper will focus on the business ethics issues at Enron that were raised from the documentation Enron: The Smartest Guys

Enron cooperation was an American energy, commodities, and services company located in Huston, Texas. It emerged in 1985 after the collaboration between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth. Before Enron's bankruptcy, it had more than 20,000 employers and was one of the largest electricity and natural gas companies in the world, with profits of over $101 billion. Fortune magazine has named Enron as "America's most innovative company" for six years in a row. By the end of the year 2001, the company’s stock price dropped from $90,000 to less than one dollar because of some misleading financial reports, too much borrowed money, and an unwillingness to give investors information that left them in doubt of its financial reports, therefore, the company

Enron Corporation was founded in Omaha, Nebraska (US), and in 1985 Houston Natural Gas Consolidated with InterNorth to make, what is now established as the energy based company. The corporation based in Houston, Texas (founded in 1985) was known as the better enterprise in North America that accomplished one of the vast natural gas transmission networks. “Enron was a provider of products and services related to natural gas, electricity and communications to wholesale and retail costumers” (Chary, 112). The company had the position of the “Most Innovative” corporation for a couple of years. Nonetheless, back in December 2001, its bankruptcy held the biggest fraud scandals in the history of the US.

Ethical issues have greatly transformed in our lives since the great Enron, Xerox and other huge corporations proposed big profits showing earnings of billions of dollars and yet in reality facing bankruptcy. These corporations faced great trouble with the federals and state for manipulating financial statements. But not only corporations can be blamed on this, accounting firms were involved in this as much as the corporations were. With the business stand point, ethics comprises of principles and standards that guide behavior. Investors, traders, customers, and legal system determine whether a specific action is ethical or unethical. Ethical issue is a vast subject, but we will look at the niche

Enron was formed in 1985 following the merger of Houston Natural Gas Co. and InterNorth Co. The Chairman Kenneth Lay, CEO Jeffrey Skilling, and CFO Andrew Fastow were the backbone of Enron during its growth period. These executives exercised their power and expertise to unethically “increase” Enron’s profits by hiding the company’s debt. The ethical dilemma that Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling faced was whether to let their stakeholders know how poorly the company was doing, or to hide the debt. They chose to cut corners and falsify information that would later come back to get them in trouble.

In 1985, Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, a natural gas pipeline company, merged, and Lay became CEO of both houses. In 1986, after many changes and more growth, the firm changes its name to Enron and relocated to Lay’s hometown of Houston, Texas. At this time Enron was both a natural gas and oil company. The company specialized in the moving of natural gas through its pipelines, extending thousands of miles across the continental United States. As the firm continued to flourish, it reformed its commercial approach by becoming a leading producer and distributer of energy in both the United States and the U.K., as well as becoming more involved in the trading market. Ambition and determination truly carried Enron to new heights, helping it to become one of the most powerful and innovative companies in the United States, even being “voted Most Innovative among FORTUNE'S Most Admired Companies” for “six years running” (Helyar). However, with much success, temptation arose, and good intentions were led astray. Damaging arrogance, risky behavior, and deception ultimately warranted the demise of the mighty Enron.

Enron became the largest seller of natural gas in America. In August 2000 Enron stocks reach almost $91 a share. As reported by Li, its annual revenues rose from about $9 billion in 1995 to over $100 billion in 2000 (2010, p.37). It has been more than a decade ago since the Enron scandal in Houston, TX. Enron was also known for one of the largest fraud scandals in American history. After so many years of power and successful deals and contracts, the company suffered a collapse and the company suffered rapidly. Both Lay and Skilling were

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.

It seems like business morals and ethics are being whisked to the side in lieu of the ever growing demand of higher stock prices, rising budget goals and investor profits. Despite the increased regulation of corporations through legislation, such as, Sarbanes-Oxley, some corporations still find themselves struggling to maintain ethics and codes of conduct within the workplace. In reviewing the failings of the Enron Scandal, one can heed the mistakes that both individual and organization malaise, such as, conflicts of interest, lack of true transparency and the sever lack of moral courage from the government, executive board, senior management and others, contributed to the energy giant’s downfall.

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).