Enron Essay

Kenneth Lay, former Chairman and CEO, and Jeff Skilling who was also a CEO and COO of Enron, had the major part in Enron when it collapsed and went bankrupt. Because of deregulations Ken Lay enter Enron in 1985 through a merger a vast network of natural gas and pipeline. Later, Enron grew into an energy trading company which was worth $68 billion in 2000. Lays family was poor, which made him ambitious to earn wealth regardless of the path he takes, hence, unethical professionalism at Enron. Enron took advantage of his decision to let gas prices float on the market. Rich Kinde found out about Enron’s oil scandal in 1987 by the misappropriation of

That change with the deregulation of electrical power markets, a change due in part to lobbying from senior Enron officials. Under the direction of former Chairman Kenneth L. Lay, Enron expanded into an energy broker, trading electricity and other commodities.

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

One example of these transactions took place in June of 2000. The SPE known as LJM2 purchased fiber-optic cable for $30 million in cash and $70 million in IOUs [3]. LJM2 sold part of the fiber to other companies for $40 million and paid Enron a 20 million dollar agency fee for helping to market the product [3]. LJM2 then sold the remaining fiber for $113 million to a company owned by Enron and used some of the money from that sale to pay off their remaining debt [3]. When it was all over, LJM2 was 2.4 million dollars richer, and Enron's credit risk had been reduced by $9 million [3]. Unfortunately for Enron and its investors, the money party was short lived.

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.

As Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind portray in The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, there was a chain-reaction of events and a hole that dug deeper with time in the life-span of, at one time the world's 7th largest corporation, Enron. The events were formulated by an equation with many factors: arbitrary accounting practices, Wall Street's evolving nature and Enron's lack of successful business plans combined with, what Jeff Skilling, CEO of Enron, believed was the most natural of human characteristics, greed. This formula resulted in fraud, deceit, and ultimately the rise and fall of Enron.

According to the movie "Gibney, A. (2005). Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" the practices that allowed Enron to achieve such success started with manipulation of earnings by Traders who were destroying daily trading records and gambling beyond their limits to a point where they lost in 5 days an amount of $90 million, losing with it all of the company’s reserves. To cover this up they mis-reported the company´s net worth. They needed a new idea and Jeff Skilling proposed to convert Enron into a stock market for natural gas, treating it as a commodity and with it granting the possibility to trade it like bonds and stocks.

The history of Enron is described in detail in the film “The Smarted Guys in the Room”. According to the film, Enron was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985, functioning originally as a producer and supplier of natural gas. Enron built and operated power plants and pipelines all over the United States. The company’s wealth expanded quickly due to marketing, promotional strategies and stock price. One of the important aspects noted in the film was Lay’s relationship with the Bush family. This will be described in detail later on and becomes a crucial piece of information during the California energy scandal. Enron’s traders were involved in a scandal early on in the company’s history involving the misappropriation of money and oil betting, this became known as the Valhalla scandal. Lay encouraged traders to continue these activities until the company was near bankrupt and finally the top traders involved were fired and convicted.

In 1985, InterNorth, a large energy and natural gas pipeline company acquired Kenneth Lay’s company, Houston Natural Gas, in an attempt to thwart a takeover. The newly converged company would later be named Enron. Kenneth Lay was named chairman and CEO very early on post-merger and is considered to be the founder of Enron. Enron’s troubles began very earlier on. Need to bring this paragraph to an end but can use this to add length to the paper if needed.

Enron executives and accountants cooked the books and lied about the financial state of the company. They manipulated the earnings and booked revenue that never came in. This was encouraged by Ken Lay as long as the company was making money. Once word got out that they were disclosing this information, their stock plummeted from $90 to $0.26 causing the corporation to file for bankruptcy.

The story of Enron begins in 1985, with the merger of two pipeline companies, orchestrated by a man named Kenneth L. Lay (Zellner & Forest, 2001). In its 15 years of existence, Enron expanded its

Enron began in July 1985, and its headquarters were in Houston. It started from a small regional energy supplier. However, Enron was dissatisfied with the traditional way of doing business, so it began to look toward energy security. Enron 's management believed that the creation of derivative securities market for any commodity was possible, so Enron developed energy commodity futures, options, and other financial derivatives. Energy deregulation brought this company great commercial opportunities. Enron was considered to be a model of the innovative company. Because of the deregulation, it became a trader of everything from oil and gas futures to weather derivatives. They took a new strategy by setting up a “gas bank”. Later, the generation of electricity forced Enron to explore new industrial customers for its gas. From 1990 to 2000, Enron largely expanded their oversea business. In 1994, Enron began buying and selling electricity. After Skilling became the COO and Fastow became the CFO of the company, Enron continued to implement dual strategies of expanding its trading activities and synchronously investing a lot of money in physical assets. Enron’s shares, in the late 1990s, had significantly outperformed the market even when the market fell.

Infinite Energy states that the second and most shady reason for Enron's collapse was the hidden losses within the company. The company allegedly enriched itself and formed partnerships specifically designed to hide $500 million in company losses. Because these losses were

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's entire scandal was based on a foundation of lies characterized by the most brazen and most unethical accounting and business practices that will forever have a place in the hall of scandals that have shamed American history. To the outside, Enron looked like a well run, innovative company. This was largely a result of self-created businesses or ventures that were made "off the balance sheet." These side businesses would sell stock, reporting profits, but not reporting losses. "Treating these businesses "off the balance sheet" meant that Enron pretended that these businesses were autonomous, separate firms. But, if the new business made money, Enron would report it as income. If the new business lost money or borrowed money, the losses and debt were not reported by Enron" (mgmtguru.com). As the Management Guru website explains, these tactics were alls designed to make Enron look like a more profitable company and to give it a higher stock price.