Preview

Enron Research Paper

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2234 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Enron Research Paper
Enron Research Paper
In 2001, the world was shocked by the demise of Enron, a multibillion dollar corporation that had thousands of employees and people that had affiliations with the company including The White House itself. Because of the financial chaos and destroyed lives and reputations this catastrophe left in its path, questions arose concerning how exactly it happened, why it occurred, and who was behind it. It is essential to understand how this multibillion dollar corporation rose to power and later imploded. Enron itself was born as the result of Houston’s Natural Gas and InterNorth, a gas based pipeline company from Nebraska in 1985. In the final analysis, the conspiracy of Kenneth Lay, Jeffery Skilling, and others, including the accounting firm of Authur Anderson, led to the collapse of Enron due to fraud, shady accounting practices, false reporting revenue, and general disregard of virtually every principle of business ethics.
Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Richard Causey went on trial for their part in the Enron scandal in January 2006. The 53-count, 65-page indictment covers a wide range of financial crimes, including insider trading, making false statements to banks and auditor’s bank, fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy. Another huge player in the Enron scandal was Arthur Anderson, who was charged with obstruction of justice for destroying thousands of documents, e-mails, and company files that connected the firm to its audits of Enron. Lay, Skilling, Causey, and their conspirators had engaged in different schemes to trick the investing public, including Enron’s shareholders, the SEC, and others, about the true act of Enron’s business practices. Enron’s publicly reported financial performances and results that were false and misleading because they didn’t reasonably and accurately reflect the company’s actual financial condition and performance. According to their indictment, the objectives of the conspiracy

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Enron Case Analysis

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Enron’s top management, especially misled not only the board of directors he was able to misled the investor which bring about Enron filing for bankruptcy in 2001. In early, 2002 criminal investigation was open by US department of Justice into Enron’s collapse. The Security exchange commission (SEC) also opened the investigation into Arthur Andersen as well because they destroy and hide evidence of Enron’s financial statement. The role of the auditing giant Arthur Andersen in the collapse of Enron is incomprehensible to some. The accounting firm overlooked significant debts that are not the Enron’s financial statement. US department of justice found them guilty on federal charges that it obstructed justice by destroying thousands of Enron documents.…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Mgmt 5590 Final

    • 3138 Words
    • 13 Pages

    Few business episodes have been the subject of so much debate and despair as the swift descent of once-admired energy trader Enron. The saga of this firm, which rose to prominence as rapidly as it subsequently fell, serves as a kind of morality tale of corporations, regulators, and investors. As we have discussed in class, the tragic effects of Enron’s overreaching arrogance provide a textbook example of both the best and the worst of American business culture and practice. Although the catastrophe’s complete impact may never be completely determined, it seems likely that Enron’s collapse caused more than one major company to cease to exist, several industries experienced radically changed environments, regulators and investors modified their behavior, and all firms are now subjected to greater scrutiny and regulatory oversight. So how did one of the brightest stars of American…

    • 3138 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    United States vs. Enron

    • 1032 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Enron Corporation was one of the largest global energy, services and commodities company. Before it was filed bankruptcy under chapter 11, it sold natural gas and electricity, delivered energy and other commodities such as bandwidth internet connection, and provided risk management and financial services to the clients around the world. Enron was established in 1930 as Northern Natural Gas Company and joined with three other companies to undertake this industry. The four companies eventually began to break apart between 1941 and 1947 as a result of a public stock offering. In 1979, Northern Natural Gas was placed under new management when it was bought by InterNorth Inc. In 1985, Kenneth Lay, CEO of Houston Natural Gas Company devised a transaction for InterNorth to purchase Houston Natural Gas. Lay was named CEO of the new company and changed InterNorth's name to Enron Corporation. This newly developed company originally was involved in distributing gas and electricity throughout the United States, and operation of power plants and pipelines worldwide. In fifteen short years Enron became the nation's seventh largest company, but the company's growth was due to several illegal activities. During 2001, Enron shares fell from eighty-five dollars to thirty cents. The devastating results occurred after it was revealed that many of its profits and revenue were the result of deals with special purpose entities. Businesses and people care about ethics in the society, therefore being socially responsible, ethical, and a good corporate citizen, is important to meet and exceed the expectations of any organization's stakeholders. Today's organizations recognize the importance of developing and sustaining a reputation that is built on doing the right things and doing things right as viewed by their key stakeholders, as has been the case with Enron. The issues surrounding business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and…

    • 1032 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sarbanes-Oxley

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Issues surrounding corporate accounting fraud emerged with great controversy during the Enron Scandal. Enron was most famously known for buying and selling energy, in addition to its creative business strategies. Keller ((2012)), "Enron used Wall Street magic to transform energy supplies into financial instruments that could be traded online like stocks and bonds. These contracts guaranteed customers a steady supply at a predictable price or at least that’s what Enron wanted investors to believe” (Enron for Dummies). The company misled the public and its investors into believing it was experiencing growth in revenue when in actuality it was losing big and hiding the losses behind bogus partnerships. The Chief Executives, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were collectively found guilty of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and bank fraud Enron’s unethical practices led to substantial losses for its investors and highlighted the need for major regulatory reform.…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Paper

    • 9026 Words
    • 37 Pages

    The broad purpose of this paper is to investigate the Enron scandal from a variety perspectives. The paper begins with a narrative of the rise and fall of Enron as the seventh largest company in the United States and the sixth largest energy company in the world. The narrative examines the historical, economic, and political conditions that helped Enron to grow into one of the world’s dominant corporation’s in the natural gas, electricity, paper and pulp, and communications markets. Upon providing the substantive narrative of Enron’s…

    • 9026 Words
    • 37 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 2001, Enron, one of America’s leading energy companies, disappeared overnight. At its height, Enron had “a stock price over $90...a marker value of 70 billion… [and] gigantic executive compensation incentive packages” (Giroux). After being exposed of unethical business and accounting methods, Enron eventually went bankrupt. Enron was convicted of fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and over 50 other charges. The Enron Scandal is a watershed moment in accounting because of the exposure and reevaluation of faulty business administration and unethical business ethics, the creation of the President’s Corporate Fraud Task Force, and the creation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The purpose of this paper is consider three possible rationales for why Enron collapsed—that key individuals were flawed, that the organization was flawed, and that some factors larger than the organization (e.g., a trend toward deregulation) led to Enron’s collapse. In viewing “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” it was clear that all three of these flaws contributed to the demise of Enron, but it was the synergy of their combination that truly let Enron to its ultimate path of destruction.…

    • 1830 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Fowler, T. (2002, October 20). The Pride and the fall of Enron. The Houston Chronicle, October 20, 2002. Retrieved September 24, 2004 from http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/special/enron/1624822…

    • 4794 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Enron, a Houston-based commodities, energy and service corporation, was named “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years by Fortune Magazine. Ironically, its shares price had peaked at $90.75 in August 2000 and dropped massively to $0.67 in January, resulting in shareholders losing approximately $11 billion. In the November of 2011, it was revealed that Enron’s earnings had been overstated by several hundred billion dollars because enormous debts had been kept off from the balance sheets and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) opened a formal investigation into Enron’s transaction. Enron incorporated “market to market accounting” for its energy business and used it on an unprecedented scale for its trading transactions,…

    • 355 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ethics

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages

    ENRON was a multinational energy corporation that was founded in Omaha, Nebraska in 1985. Regardless of ENRON’s vast successes within the natural gas industry - within which it was considered to be one of the foremost natural gas conglomerate companies, the mention of the name ENRON in current times is commonly associated with a financial scandal involving the company. This scandal, also known as the ‘ENRON Scandal’ gained a vast amount of media coverage on both domestic and international levels; in addition, the ENRON scandal resulted in the bankruptcy of the company, the criminal prosecution of a number of executives, and an loss of upwards of $2 billion with regard to investors, employees, and clients.…

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Enron Essay

    • 1439 Words
    • 6 Pages

    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 Sridhanran, Dickes & Caines (2002, p.1), Enron’s rank number is the seventh in the United States by Fortune magazine in April 2002. Their businesses were sale of nature gas, electricity sector, water, metal, broadband and newsprint. Enron has been altered from the old economy company to the new economy company and focus on HFV (Hypothetical Future value). The profits were grown by buying electric at stable prices from the suppliers and sale the different prices for customers. When the falsehood of their profits was opened, the investors withdraw the capital. Enron start collapse (“Case study: The collapse”, n.d., pp.1-2).…

    • 1439 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Personal Ethical Framework

    • 2597 Words
    • 11 Pages

    “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” shows us how basic human nature does not change, whether it is firing as a means to resolve disputes, or in the ceaseless obsession to gain for profitability sake. This all makes for terrible human actions. According to Bethany McLean, the collapse of Enron is a story of “human failure” that created a culture where profitability is the priority.…

    • 2597 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Enron Essay Example

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The persons who help Kenny Lay with the fraud in Enron where, Jeff Skilling who was the CEO of Enron, Andy Fastow who was the CFO and Official Financial. Fastow cook the books, he open many investment partnership with companies as as Merill Lynch, and J.P Morgan Chase. Fastow promised them Eron stocks. Lou Pai he was CEO of Eron Energy Services, he left Eron with over $250 million he became the second largest land owner in Colorado, he purchased the 77,500 acre.…

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Enron Paper

    • 1612 Words
    • 7 Pages

    “Something was very rotten in the state of Enron.” This quote by Michigan Senator Carl Levin is a twist of words from a famous playwright, Shakespeare’s Hamlet; “Something was very rotten in the state of Denmark.” From the play, this was recited because there was a lot of corruption in Denmark from the betrayal in royalty. In comparison to Levin’s quote, there was betrayal of Enron leaders to their employees, as well as the company itself.…

    • 1612 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    • When Sharron Watkins anonymously wrote a letter disclosing her concerns to Ken Lay, he reported the letter to Enron lawyers who had been involved in the scheme. Some speculate that Lay intentionally went to the lawyers knowing they would not put an end to the manipulations, thus implying that he knew what was going on.…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics