Who Was The Most Responsible For The Fall Of Enron

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.

Several high-profile cases of corporate financial fraud primarily the scandals involving Enron and Worldcom lead to the creation of The Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. SOX requires that companies maintain an archive of all business records for not less than five years. If found in violation of these requirements, consequences could involve potentially accruing fines or jail time.

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.

Without a question the BOD should have placed a high degree of reliance on Andersen, which at the time was one of the most prestigious worldwide accounting firms. The auditors should have known the kind of accounting taking place in Enron. In my opinion, Andersen knew, at least to some extent, the company’s financial condition. However, Enron was already too deep under water that blowing the whistle so late would have created problems for Andersen as well. According to the case, on 02/05/01, Andersen held internal meeting during which it addressed the company’s accounting from and oversight of the LJM partnership. Andersen never discussed these concerns with the Audit and Compliance Committee. Although the BOD has its faults, it should have been able to rely on Andersen’s work.

Arthur Andersen (AA) contributed to the Enron disaster when it has failed to the management by failing to have Enron establish and enforce its own internal control. There has been flaws to AA‘s internal control. There has been assumption that AA partners were too motivated by revenue recognition thus, overlooking several criteria when providing their services to Enron. Additionally, AA also recognised the retention of audit clients as vital and a loss of any clients would be disadvantaged to an auditor’s career. In AA internal control, the person who is able to make most of the decisions is the person who is most concerned about the revenue or losses of the client’s company.

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.

List 5 key stakeholders affected by the collapse of Enron? Explain briefly how each stakeholder was affected.

According to Johnson (2012) leaders are powerful role models, and policies will have a little effect if leaders do not follow the rules they set. In Enron case, corruption and ethical misconduct were deeply embedded in their business culture where profitability was more important than ethics. In this paper, I will address the factors that had led to the development of the culture of profit before principle at Enron. Also, I will create my personal code of ethics that will guide me in my professional and personal decision making and doing the right thing when faced with ethical challenges.

Arthur Andersen was Enron’s auditor. There were no checks and balances to ensure that Mr. Andersen’s financial statements and bookkeeping were correct. Enron and potential investors were drawn in by Mr. Andersen’s reports reflecting that Enron was a financially stable and investors should invest with Enron. Andersen’s integrity had not come into question in regards to accuracy and accounting procedures.

1. The Enron debacle created what one public official reported was a “crisis of confidence” on the part of the public in the accounting profession. List the parties who you believe are most responsible for that crisis. Briefly justify each of your choices.

OneTel and Enron were huge technology companies, dominating the competition that they faced although - everything changed. Both of these companies operated in the same era, coincedently both suffering financial collapse. The reasons were mainly because of the failure to follow major accounting principles, lacking morals and lacking strong work ethics. If even a major corporation can fall into this “trap”, then avoiding doesn’t sound easy, although accountants can easily avoid scandals by following a precise set of given rules and ethics. OneTel and Enron are prime examples which demonstrate the danger when a business is faced with an accounting scandal - which in turn could have been avoided.

Arthur Andersen (AA) contributed to the Enron disaster when AA consulting became its own separate entity, named Accenture. Revenues from consulting services surpassed revenue from auditing services. A natural competitiveness grew between the two rivals and this is where the problems began to start. Management held maximinizing revenues as their primary focus of success and promotions/bonuses were based on this factor. The CEO of AA, Joe Berardino, was an extremely aggressive pursuer of revenue. This set a negative culture at the top of the company and partners were expected to comply and atttain that demand. In addition, AA recognized the retention of audit clients as imperative

Enron and Arthur Anderson were both giants in their own industry. Enron, a Texas based company in the energy trading business, was expanding rapidly in both domestic and global markets. Arthur Anderson, LLC. (Anderson), based out of Chicago, was well established as one of the big five accounting firms. But the means by which they achieved this status became questionable and eventually contributed to their demise. Enron used what if often referred to as “creative” accounting methods, this resulted in them posting record breaking earnings. Anderson, who earned substantial audit and consultation fees from Enron, failed to comply with the auditing standards required in their line of work. Investigations and reports have resulted in finger

Most of the world has heard of Enron, the American, mega-energy company that “cooked their books” ( ) and cost their investors billions of dollars in lost earnings and retirement funds. While much of the controversy surrounding the Enron scandal focused on the losses of investors, unethical practices of executives and questionable accounting tactics, there were many others within close proximity to the turmoil. It begs the question- who was really at fault and what has been done to prevent it from happening again?

Arthur Andersen supplied external auditing service to Enron since 1980s, internal auditing since 1990s. The long-term cooperation between Arthur Andersen and Enron blurred the lines between external auditor and the company under auditing. Many accountants of Enron were ex-employees of Arthur Andersen. The close relation between the Arthur Andersen and Enron led to the