Enron : The Collapse Of Enron

The auditors of Enron did fail in their task of providing a duty of care to all of the parties. The main reason for this is that they failed to correctly audit the assets and financial position of Enron resulting in all stakeholders having no clue about the forthcoming collapse of Enron. This resulted in the stakeholders facing a very critical condition or a phase where in they were not sure if they would be able to recover their investments and debts or not. The auditing process has revealed several issues and findings of problems within the accounting system and the same have been discussed as the primary areas of exposure, areas of possible mishandling of accounts

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.

This paper explores the ethical dimension of the demise of Enron Corporation an reflection of author, placed in hypothetical situations. Accounting Fraud and Management philosophy will be the main discussion topics, along with the motivations of fraud. The fall of Enron can be directly attributed to a violation of ethical standards in business. This makes Enron unique in corporate history for the same actions that made Enron on of the fastest growing and most profitable corporations, at the turn of the 21st century, also bout about its destruction. This paper does not explore legal consequences, only the ethical dimension of Enron’s actions.

Enron was firstly a natural gas pipeline company that combine as the combination of Nebraska and Omaha’s natural gas company, Houston Natural gas and InterNorth. It took 15 years from 1985 to 2000 to climb up into the one of the largest gas company in North America. Behind the successful of the company, it was a story of betrayal and

Enron was one of the largest energy, commodities, and services company in the world. It was founded in 1985 and based in Huston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, there are more than 20,000 staff and with claimed revenues nearly $101 billion during 2000. Enron was the rank 16 of Fortune 500 in 2000. In 2001 it revealed that Enron’s financial report was planned accounting fraud, known since as the Enron scandal. In the Enron scandal, Enron used fraudulent accounting practices to cover its fraud in reporting Enron’s financial information. Its purpose is to hide the significant liabilities from its financial statement. Enron tried to make its financial report with great revenue to attract more people to invest it. It continued to spread the information that advance its stock price continued to rise. In fact, Enron was with a large amount of liabilities and loss. The key executives of Enron continually spread the fake information of Enron’s financial report and kept encourage the people to buy its stock. They knew the real financial condition of Enron. They knew the outlook of Enron is not good, so they sold their stocks secretly to generate profit before the company bankruptcy. After the people knew that Enron had a large amount of loss, the stock price was drop from 90 dollars per share to just pennies. In addition, the bankrupt of Enron had a great effect in the California energy market. The bankrupt of Enron made California had a shortage of electricity

Enron was a business conglomerate during the 1990s, formed by the merger of smaller oil and energy companies. Houston executives Kenneth Lay (Chairman), Jeffrey Skilling (chief executive officer (CEO) and Andrew Fastow (chief financial officer (CFO) parlayed their new mega-company into a favorite Wall Street company, bragging of record profits with negligible losses. During the 1990s, the three senior executives changed Enron from a traditional gas and electricity company into a $150 billion energy corporation. For instance, from 1998 to 2000 only, Enron’s returns rose from approximately $31 billion to over $100 billion, making the company to be the seventh biggest conglomerate of the Fortune 500. Unidentified to nearly everybody, this picture was the result of one of the largest swindles in financial history (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2013).

Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron, Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins, 432 pages, March 25, 2003, Crown Publishing Group, ISBN: 978-0-767-91368-3

Enron had been the darling of corporate America: it was voted its most innovative company, adviser to US Government, a Fortune 500 top ten player, backed by the world’s biggest banks and rated by the top market analysts (Tonge, Greer, & Lawton, 2003). While it is shocking to hear about ethical scandals from big corporations, this paper discusses the major reasons and lessons learnt from Enron’s scandal. Enron’s scandal wasn’t caused by few “bad apples” but the organization’s culture, as set by Enron’s leadership, was the main driving force toward unethical behavior (Kulik, O 'Fallon & Salimath, 2008). However, it didn’t take one party to destroy this great structure; many parties were responsible for it starting with its leadership, then its auditors, and the entire US financial system that consequently learnt the lesson and have made major changes that seem to be effective nevertheless continuous follow up and close monitoring is still necessary to avoid having another Enron in the future.

Enron company was created in 1985 out of Texas. The company was in the business of natural-gas pipelines. Eventually they merged with InterNorth and their business shifted towards other natural gas productions. They began to trade natural gas and electricity, which resulted in their biggest growth driver for their company. Enron was not only top in the country, but in the world they were known for their business’s success. In the year of 2000 they hit number seven on the fortune 500 list. At this point, Enron was also the sixth largest energy company in the world. But, the company quickly became the largest bankruptcy in the United States history. Humble beginnings of this company were not so humbling to the auditors and investigators soon after they uncovered their overstated financial statements.

Since then, Enron has become a symbol of corporate fraud and corruption. With the bankruptcy of Enron, undoubtedly, the investor received a lot of lost, especially those who have a large number of Enron stock. In accordance with US law, after filing for bankruptcy protection, Enron 's assets will give priority to pay taxes, repay bank loans, pay staff salaries. After paying all these, the company is already worthless and the investors certainly lose everything. After Enron’s accounting fraud, the government created the Sarbanes -Oxley Act of 2002, a United States Federal law that requires top management must individual certify the accuracy of the financial information. Even though the creation of Sarbanes- Oxley Act ensures the credibility of the published financial reports, the public trust in the accounting and assurance industry has decreased significantly.

In light of the recent scandals that rose around big multinationals such as Enron and WorldCom, it has become evident that reform in the traditional corporate operations and objectives was to be encompassed in the organisations corporate strategies. Indeed throughout the years, companies main objectives were defined primarily as being economic objectives, Multinationals developed with sight of profit maximisations regardless to the other incentives, Friedman considered that to be the foundation for a well-managed company, it was further considered that the financing of any other sort of social corporate activities rather unnecessary. The expenses were regarded as expenditures for the owners and investors; this was a time where shareholders rights were regarded as conflicting with other constituents namely the employees, creditors, customers or the community in general. However this interpretation is seen as rather inadequate due to the nature of the amalgamated relation between both constituents. Stakeholders in modern corporate doctrine are considered as a core apparatus for the well functioning of a business. It is however often argued that the only way for a corporation to achieve better results and maximise its profits is to include other people in the process, individuals or organisations with direct or indirect interest in the well performance of the company, that is the reason why modern regulations and codes include a number of stakeholders other than the

One of the most basic tenets of all companies, whether small or large, is to create a principled corporate culture. Those ethical principles must start with the executives of the organization and trickle down to the individual employees. Leaders affect the employees’ decision-making process, yet they tend to adopt the same rationale as their leaders when reaching a decision. The leadership of a company needs to find a balance between risk and creating opportunity. While generating revenue and growth are paramount, at most, organizations, executives set the tone regarding what actions and behaviors are acceptable to achieve these objectives. This paper will explore what happened to Enron when its leadership

Enron Corporation was one of the largest integrated natural gas and electricity companies in the world. It marketed natural gas liquids worldwide and operated one of the largest natural gas transmission systems in the world, totaling more than 36,000 miles. It was also one of the largest independent developers and producers of electricity in the world, serving both industrial and emerging markets. Enron was also a major supplier of solar and wind renewable energy worldwide, managed the largest portfolio of natural gas-related risk management contracts in the world, and was one of the world's biggest independent oil and gas exploration companies. In North America, Enron was the largest wholesale marketer of natural gas and electricity. Enron pioneered innovative trading products, such as gas futures and weather futures,

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

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?