Enron Scandal Essay

and the Collapse of Enron Introduction From America’s 7th most valuable company in December 2000, to a company in ruins by early 2002, Enron has been involved in one of the most incredible reverses of fortune ever. With shares riding high on Wall Street at $84.87 on the 28th December 2000, and awards such as “America’s most innovative company” from Fortune Magazine 6 years running, and “Energy Company of the Year” from the Financial Times also in 2000, it looked as though Enron were promising to

Introduction Enron lead the American energy, commodities, Enron Services was based in Houston, TX. During the turn of the 21st century Enron had an employee base of 20,000 people on payroll. Enron made profits by selling electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper. Enron’s revenues totaled over $101 billion in 2000. Due to Enron’s earning Fortune named Enron as the America Most Innovative Company. Enron was one of the biggest publicly traded companies and highly trusted

Introduction Enron lead the American energy, commodities, Enron Services was based in Houston, TX. During the turn of the 21st century Enron had an employee base of 20,000 people on payroll. Enron made profits by selling electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper. Enron’s revenues totaled over $101 billion in 2000. Due to Enron’s earning Fortune named Enron as the America Most Innovative Company. Enron was one of the biggest publicly traded companies and highly trusted

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. Enron was a company that was ranked as seventh out of the five hundred leading companies in the United States and is the largest U.S. energy company that went bankrupt leaving debts amounting to nearly U.S. $ 31.2 billion. In instance with the case of Enron known occurrence of moral threat behavior such

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

these new ventures within its financial statements. In the beginning, Enron was revolutionary in the gas pipeline industry, because it took advantage of the deregulated environment. As a result, Enron could ensure their customers, gas suppliers, consistent gas prices through hedging (Healy and Palepu 2). Enron’s success with this energy-trading model built its trustworthiness in the energy industry and beyond. Obviously, Enron proved its ability to successfully turn a profit with earnings of $979

Enron Corporation has been accused of cooking the books and overstating company profits in its financial reports. In addition, Enron’s trading business adopted mark-to-market accounting, which meant that once a long-term contract was signed, income was estimated as the present value of net future cash flows, even though in some cases there were serious questions about the viability of these contracts and their associated costs. Author Andersen provided both consulting and auditing services which

the biggest legal scandals of a company being unethical was in 2001, when, Enron, a natural gas pipeline company went from having $65 billions in assets to being bankrupt 24 days after. Enron Corporation was founded in 1985, in Houston, Texas, it was a merger between Houston Natural Gas Co. and InterNorth Inc. Enron reached dramatic heights, it was the seventh largest corporation in America, and named the “Most innovative company” by Fortune magazine for 6 years straight. Enron innovated the entire

choices conflict with one’s self-interests. The Enron Scandal is a very interesting topic to better understand what are some responses organizations may have to unethical behavior.

First, if it were not for the people at the top of the Enron Company making horribly unethical decisions than none of this would have happened. However because this is an accounting project and the focus of this paper is on accounting, I personally believe that the Andersen firm should be held most responsible