Taking a Look at the Enron Scandal

More than a decade ago, one of the most commanding corporations in modern American history filed for bankruptcy. Enron, a seemingly invulnerable company would eventually provoke sweeping changes in regulation that controls the management and accounting of public companies even to this day. The Enron scandal has come to be known as one of the prime audit failures of all time and serves as a classic example of corporate greed and corruption. However, for the generation that watched in horror as corporations such as Enron fell along with the stock market, this scandal is slowly becoming just that: history. And for the newer generation of college students like me, it is almost ancient history. Despite the time that separates us from this scandal, it has never been more important to remember the lessons learned and best understand how the adoption of The Clarkson Principles can guide our careers in the business sector.

In this incident, the chairman of one of India’s largest technology company, Ramalingam Raju, the person who has sought to use technology to improve life in rural India said that he concocted important financial results, including a cash balance of more than 1 billion dollars. Analysts in India have termed the Satyam scandal India's own Enron scandal. Some social commentators see it more as a part of a broader problem relating to India's caste-based, family-owned corporate environment. This Scandal is obviously a major blow to the reputation of the IT outsourcing industry in India, and reveals some of the challenges of due diligence in such relationships.

Enron used this loop hole and began to take many assets and liabilities off its balance sheet and into that of SPE’s, so as to be able to access more capital and significantly reduce its risks. It specifically used these SPE’s to borrow funds directly from outside lenders by supplying its own credit and using its high stock prices as guarantees. Enron took full advantage of accounting limitations in managing its earnings and balance sheet to portray a rosy picture of its performance.

In a front-page article with no less than four by-lines (7/03, "Enron Triggers a Slew of Proposed Fixes But What Will Stick?" by Steve Liesman et al.), The Wall Street Journal reports, "As more than 10 congressional committees pursue inquiries, 32 Enron-related bills have been introduced to address ills ranging from auditor conflicts of interest to the scams of an unregulated derivatives market. The Securities and Exchange Commission pledges to reform accounting rules, get tough on fraud and overhaul auditor oversight. General Electric Co. says it will issue a disclosure statement the size of a phone book, if that's what investors want." The trouble is that such a phone book, if it reflected the state economic

The financial collapse of Enron had substantial and far-reaching ramifications throughout the financial investment field, tax compliance professions and the accounting profession. Intense Congressional scrutiny resulted in a new era of transparency in financial reporting, stricter reporting standards as provided in Sarbanes-Oxley and substantial penalties for failure to comply with new financial reporting and tax compliance standards in the Internal Revenue Code (Bottiglieri et. al., 2009)

From the 1980s until now, there have been a lot of accounting scandals which were widely announced on by media. The result of this situation is many companies were bankruptcy protection requests, and closing. One of the most widely reported emulation of accounting scandals is Enron Company. Enron Corporation is one of the largest energy companies in the world. Enron was founded in Houston, Texas, America in July 1985 by the consolidation between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth of Omaha, Nebraska (“Enron and Enderson: The story”, n.d.). According to

Enron’s reported net income grew from $703 million in 1998 to $979 million in 2000, totaling 35.1% profit growth for the three-year period. Enron was among the leading of “high performing” companies by sustaining a high earnings growth insight. However, as Table 1 indicates, Enron’s reported profits were microscopic relation to revenues. Net income did not grow at anything near the same rate as revenues, which grew a remarkable rate of more than 3 times of the income from 1998 to 2000. As a result, there was a steady decline in net profit margin, from 2.2% in 1998 to a paltry 1% in 2001. Similarly, Enron’s gross profit margin

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

In the earlier 1900’s after the decrease of government control within the activities of natural gas companies, Enron was born, a merger of two businesses, Houston Natural gas and InterNorth a Nebraska-based pipeline company. Later on during the big merger, the new company, Enron, accumulated tons of debt as a result of the deregulation, losing rights to their pipelines. With the debt, Enron researched new business strategies to survive. During that time Kenneth Lay, the chief executive officer of Enron hired McKinsey and Company, a management consulting company to help restore Enron. McKinsey and company assigned a young consultant named Jeffery to the rescue. Jeffery, with experience in banking assets and liability management, suggested a revolutionary business plan. Creating a gas bank in which Enron would buy from other gas networks of suppliers and sell to a network of consumers which granted the company both supply and price at which they wanted to sell it for.

I have described the ethical and governance issues of the Enron scandal that took place in 2001. In this paper, there is information about the way things went the way it did with the Enron scandal. They hide a lot of documents pertaining to how their profits increase so rapidly. It also includes the close link Kenneth Lay had with George Bush. The investigators had some help with what happened in the scandal of Enron.

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.

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

As competition increased and the economy started to plunge in the early 2000s, Enron struggled to maintain their profit margins. Executives determined that in order to keep their debt ratio low, they would need to transfer debt from their balance sheet. “Reducing hard assets while earning increasing paper profits served to increase Enron’s return on assets (ROA) and reduce its debt-to-total-assets ratio, making the company more attractive to credit rating agencies and investors” (Thomas, 2002). Executives developed Structured Financing and Special Purpose Entities (SPE), which they used to transfer the majority of Enron’s debt to the SPEs. Enron also failed to appropriately disclose information regarding the related party transactions in the notes to the financial statements.Andersen performed audit work for Enron and rendered an unqualified opinion of their financial statements while this activity occurred. The seriousness and amount of misstatement has led some to believe that Andersen must have known what was going on inside Enron, but decided to overlook it. Assets and equities were overstated by over $1.2 billion, which can clearly be considered a material amount (Cunningham & Harris, 2006). These are a few of several practices that spiraled out of control in an effort to meet forecasted quarterly earnings. As competition grew against the energy giant and their

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.