The Enron Scandal Of A Company

Through the history of the United States and the history of corporate fraud, many infamous people and entities have taken advantage and abused the corporate system while finding loop holes or discrepancies to use in their favor. Corporate Fraud consists of activities undertaken by an individual or company that are done in a dishonest or in an illegal manner, and are designed to give an advantage to the perpetuating individual or company (Ivestopedia,1). Investors have been known to throw money around if its meaningless as seen on Wolf of Wall Street and other movies. In such large public firms, its rather difficult to keep track of every dollar, so cutting corners here and there in everyday transactions, is something that becomes a

More and more corporate scandals are happening in America. Why have these scandals just shown up in recent years? What causes these corporations to lie and be deceitful towards investors? Though once seen as legitimate, fair, honest, and respectable, corporations have arrived at a stage of greed and deception. This can be explained by a number of factors such as how the stock market works, the stock market boom, changing company practices, CEO benefits, and specific company examples.

Companies such as Enron from approximately 1996 to 2001 were thriving and the stock price rising constantly. Such a move on the company’s stock was attracted millions of investors who wanted to invest in a stable company they could trust. Little did they know that the company with over 60 Billion dollars in market capitalization at one point, was about to collapse. The company’s stock reached a high of approximately 90 dollars per share in 2000, and the following year shares plummeted to less than one dollar. As one can imagine, investors were terrified, millions lost the entire retirement savings, and other were just afraid to trust the financial markets. Enron, and others were taking advantage of the loose accounting regulations to recognize revenue improperly, make use of special purpose entities to create “fake” revenue, and weak corporate governance.

When companies such as Enron, WorldCom, or ABF go under, those who stand to lose the most are the investors of that company. The investors are the true victims of Arthur Andersen’s accounting and auditing failures. In reference to Enron as one example, “By December 31, 2000, Enron’s stock was priced at $83.13…Yet within a year, Enron’s image was in tatters and its stock price had plummeted nearly to zero” (Healy, P. M., & Palepu, K. G, 2003, p. 3). Given these numbers a stock portfolio of 5,000 shares of stock which started with a value of $415,650 ended up with a value of nearly $0 after only one year. Many employees of Enron invested their retirement savings in company stock only to see it vanish. Similar results to this can be seen with all business failures. The collapse of WorldCom is another glaring example. Not only did the investors and employees of WorldCom lose vast amounts of money, rival companies also felt the

Q 1: Evaluate Enron profit and cash flow performance during the period 1998 – 2000?

The United States that have been considered as a super power country and also the direction of science disciplines including accounting must felt bitterness. Business scandals that happened seemed eliminate confidence by the business world about the practice of good corporate governance in the United States.

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

Financial statement fraud is usually a means to an end rather than an end in itself. When people cook the books they may doing it to buy more time to quietly fix business problems that prevent their entities from achieving its expected earnings or complying with loan covenants (Fraud Magazine, 2014. It may also be done to obtain or renew financing that would not be granted or would be smaller if honest financial statements were provided. People intent on profiting from crime may commit financial statement fraud to obtain loans they can then siphon off for personal gain or to inflate the price of the company 's shares, allowing them to sell their holdings or exercise stock options at a profit (Fraud Magazine, 2014). However, in many past cases of financial statement fraud, the perpetrators have gained little or nothing personally in financial terms. Instead the focus appears to have

In 2001, Enron Corporation went into bankruptcy due to the disclosure of false information in its financial statements. Similarly, when Lehman Brothers collapsed there was no evidence that it had ever publicly disclosed certain detrimental accounting information. Cases of accounting fraud such as these have become increasingly serious. Accounting fraud can result in creditors and stockholders losing confidence in listed companies, which negatively affects the whole worldwide economy. This paper will briefly analyse some of the causes of accounting fraud in listed companies, and then examine and evaluate three possible solutions to address the

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.

Internet was being used as a new medium of doing business. It helped in growth in the trading business

The past decade has seen the discredit and collapse of various high-profile corporations across the world. These scandals were inherently the result of fraud, scams, mismanagement, fraudulent reporting and audit failure among many other deficiencies present in the corporate governance model of various syndicates. Some of these made the very foundation of the financial markets unstable and open to financial crisis. The international and national community were compelled to more efficiently address the issues of corporate fraud, misconduct of management, corruption and weak audit measures. In this paper we will focus on fraud, mainly occupational fraud, within corporations and combat mechanisms available within corporate governance. “No entity is immune from fraud. Fraud indiscriminately affects all types of organizations regardless of sector, size, or geographical location. It does not distinguish between public or private entities, by what they do, by their environmental footprint, by their level of sustainability, by their public profile, or by the number of years they have been in existence.” The consequences of fraud can prove to be dire for any organisation, from irreparable damage to reputation to possible bankruptcy. As per the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) Global Fraud Study 2014, survey participants estimated that the typical organization loses 5 per cent of revenues each year to fraud. If applied to the 2013 estimated Gross World

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?

Unfortunately, scandals like Enron are not isolated incidents and the last decade has offered Americans a disheartening perspective with comparable scandals like that of WorldCom and Tyco, Sunbeam, Global Crossing and many more. Companies have a concrete responsibility not just to their investors but to society as a whole to have practices which deter corporate greed and looting and which actively and effectively work to prevent such things from happening. This