The Enron Conglomerate : The Fourth Greatest Income Earning Corporation

Enron was a corporation that reached heights unknown, only to watch it fall apart from the inside out based on a foundation of falsehoods and cheating. Enron established a business culture that flourished on competition and was perceived in society as an arrogant corporation, mainly because of its corporate leadership. The fairytale of Enron actually ended as a nightmare with it destroyed by one of America’s largest bankruptcies in history. The demise of Enron impacted the livelihood and futures of numerous employees, their pensions, and in due course impacted Wall Street in a significant way. Even people today are amazed at how such a powerful company met its demise so rapidly. Enron’s end was a product of greed when certain executives of Enron were not eager to accept the failure of their company. The company utilized mark-to-market accounting that detailed the projected impending profits from a long-term deal (Lawry, 2015, p. 28) The results of the deals did not generate revenue as anticipated, but tremendous loss instead. This resulted in Enron accumulating enormous amounts of debt that they attempted to keep classified from the public. Ultimately the truth came to fruition.

Enron was one of the largest electricity and natural gas companies in the world located in Houston, Texas. On December 2nd 2001, Enron filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy when it was found by the SEC that they were misstating their income and their equity value fell below what their balance sheet had stated. The stock of the company was once selling around $90 per share and had a net worth of $70 billion dollars. At one point, the company stood as the 6th largest energy company in their world known for their innovativeness and is now known as one of the largest accounting scandals in history.

Enron was an energy trading and communications company located in Houston, Texas. During 1996-2001 Enron was given the name of America’s Most Innovative Company by Fortune magazine as it was the seventh-largest corporation in the US. The problem that led this company to bankruptcy was due to the fact that fraudulent accounting practices took place allowing Enron to overstate their earnings and tuck away their high debt liabilities in order to have a more appealing balance sheet (Forbes.com, 2002). Enron’s accounting team “cooked” the books to every meaning of the word so that their investors would not see anything wrong with the failing organization. This poorly structured company led people to jail time, unemployment, and caused retirement stocks to be dried up. Enron had a social responsibility to its stockholders and rather than being up front and honest about the failing company they hid every financial flaw in order to keep receiving money from its investors. By Enron not keeping a social

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

In the documentary video, Bethany McLean stated that Enron’s Financial Statements does not makes sense; “the company was producing little cash flow, and debt is rising”. Fraud was present. “The company's lack of accuracy in reporting its financial affairs, followed by financial restatements disclosing billions of dollars of omitted liabilities and losses, contributed to its downfall”(Effects of Enron, 2005). This is dishonesty at its best in accounting world.

Enron was at one time America 's seventh largest corporation. Enron fooled the world by portraying to be a steady company with good revenue but at the end we all seen that was not the case. Surprisingly large parts of Enron profit were made of paper. This was made possible due to traders and executives who were corrupt. Having deep debt and hiding

Enron was founded by Ken Lay in 1985 as a result of a merger of two gas companies. Enron was in top fortune 500 at number 7 and could not produce accurate financial statements to their investors. Top executives sold over a billion dollars in personal stock two years prior to their demise. Thousands of employees lost their jobs and. Author Anderson shredded all the financial statements all in one day. Employees of Enron lost over a billion and retirement and pension. Many of the top executives got off with just a slap on the wrist. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was set into place to make sure financial organizations are honest with investors.

Enron Corporation was an American energy trading company who committed the largest audit fraud alongside Arthur Andersen and filed for one of the largest bankruptcies in history in 2001 after producing false numbers and committing fraud for years (“Enron’s Questionable Transactions” page 93). Enron failed to run an ethical business in multiple aspects. The executives of the company abused their powers by having board members not properly oversee its employees. Enron committed accounting malpractice by producing false financial reports to hide the debt from failed projects and deals. Using a mark-to-market accounting method, Enron would create assets and claim the projected profit for the books immediately even if the company had not made any profit yet. In order to hide its failures, rather than reporting their loss, they would transfer the loss to an off-the-books account, ultimately leading the loss to go unreported. Along with Enron hiding losses and creating false profit for the

The Enron corporation was an amalgamation of Houston Natural Gas and Internorth two of the largest natural gas suppliers in the United States. It was built upon the company 's ability to convince congress to deregulate the sale of natural gas through supplying electrical pieces at market prices. This allowed Enron to begin to sell power at higher prices therefore driving their revenue up. The company also began to spread its grasp out of natural gas and into a myriad of other power sources across the globe including water, pulp and paper plants. This was all done through a massive series of loopholes and massive amounts of money being funneled into Congress to lobby against regulations of such activities.

Before going into an analysis on the organizational culture at Enron, I will first elaborate on the severity of the unethical behavior that existed at Enron. The problem can best be shown in the words of an Enron employee who said “If I’m going to my boss’s office to talk about compensation, and if I step on some guy’s throat and that doubles it, then I’ll stomp on that guy’s throat”(Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). This culture of greed and corruption can also be seen through Enron’s mark to market accounting system, in which Enron cashed in on ideas and “future profits” without actually making anything. Furthermore,

Enron started as a sound company that had a promising future in the oil and energy business. The companies CEO and CFO were charged on 35 different accounts of fraud, conspiracy, and insider trading that cleared most of its employee’s retirement pensions and billions of dollars for others (Unknown, 2016). It is impossible to account for every transaction that a company will produce, but the revamping of government

“Just as character matters in people, it matters in organizations,” says Justin Schultz, a corporate psychologist in Denver. The Enron scandal had a big exposure in 2001 confirming the big secret to the increase in billions. In July 1985, Enron formed the merger of Houston Natural Gas and Omaha-based Inter North. The Enron corporation was an American energy company based in Houston Texas. The corporation’s catastrophe in 2001 signifies the biggest business liquidation ever, while also highlighting corporate America’s moral shortcomings. Along with Arthur Andersen, Enron was one of the largest audit and accounting partnerships in the world. Enron experienced the greatest audit

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 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.

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.