CASE 1.1
ENRON CORPORATION
Synopsis
Arthur Edward Andersen built his firm, Arthur Andersen & Company, into one of the largest and most respected accounting firms in the world through his reputation for honesty and integrity. “Think straight, talk straight” was his motto and he insisted that his clients adopt that same attitude when preparing and issuing their periodic financial statements. Arthur Andersen’s auditing philosophy was not rule-based, that is, he did not stress the importance of clients complying with specific accounting rules because in the early days of the U.S. accounting profession there were few formal
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4. When Spacek retired in 1973, Arthur Andersen & Co. was one of the largest and, arguably, the most prominent accounting firm worldwide
5. The predecessor of Enron Corporation was an Omaha-based natural gas company created in 1930; steady growth in profits and sales and numerous acquisitions allowed Enron to become the largest natural gas company in the United States by the mid-1980s.
6. During the 1990s, Kenneth Lay, Enron’s CEO, and his top subordinate, Jeffrey Skilling, transformed the company from a conventional natural gas supplier into an energy trading company.
7. Lay and Skilling placed a heavy emphasis on “strong earnings performance” and on increasing Enron’s stature in the business world.
8. Enron executives used hundreds of SPE’s (special purpose entities) to arrange large and complex related party transactions that served to strengthen Enron’s reported financial condition and operating results.
9. During 2001, Enron’s financial condition deteriorated rapidly after many of the company’s SPE transactions unraveled; in December 2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy.
10. Following Enron’s collapse, the business press and other critics began searching for parties to hold responsible for what, at the time, was the nation’s largest corporate bankruptcy.
11. Criticism of Andersen’s role in the Enron debacle focused on three key issues: the large amount of consulting revenue the firm earned from Enron, the
CEO Kenneth Lay was a very smart man who always thought ahead of the curve. In his search for new opportunities, he started thinking about the deregulation of energy markets, particularly the natural gas market. Then in 1985, Lay eventually founded Enron in Houston, Texas. This was the result of merging two relatively small regional natural gas pipeline companies: Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth.
By August 2001, the financial statement fraud became obvious and by October Enron management announced that the company was worth $1.2 billion less than what was previously recorded. The difference was due to inflated estimates of income and failure to include all the debt in the financial reports that were sent out to investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) started investigating Enron. By November 2001 Enron admitted to overstating its past four year earnings by $586 million and admitted to owing over $6 billion in debt. After this admission the price of Enron stock dropped incredibly. Investors and creditors requested immediate repayments from Enron. However, since Enron could not come up with any cash to repay its creditors, it filed for bankruptcy in December of 2001. Thousands of Enron employees and investors lost their savings, their children’s college funds and pension when Enron collapsed due to financial statement misrepresentation by its management. A lawsuit on behalf of a group of Enron’s shareholders was filed against Enron’s executives and directors whereby 29 of them were accused of insider trading and misleading the public.
In order “to offer high-quality accounting services”, Arthur Andersen (AA), a Northwestern accounting professor started a business to offer services to clients promoting “integrity and sound audit opinions over higher short-run profits”. The company’s “four cornerstones” was good service, quality audits, well-managed staff, and profits for the firm. Their strategy was to focus on quality and high standards of audits rather than profits, a very successful strategy that led to consistent growth over the years.
That change with the deregulation of electrical power markets, a change due in part to lobbying from senior Enron officials. Under the direction of former Chairman Kenneth L. Lay, Enron expanded into an energy broker, trading electricity and other commodities.
Enron began in July 1985, and its headquarters were in Houston. It started from a small regional energy supplier. However, Enron was dissatisfied with the traditional way of doing business, so it began to look toward energy security. Enron 's management believed that the creation of derivative securities market for any commodity was possible, so Enron developed energy commodity futures, options, and other financial derivatives. Energy deregulation brought this company great commercial opportunities. Enron was considered to be a model of the innovative company. Because of the deregulation, it became a trader of everything from oil and gas futures to weather derivatives. They took a new strategy by setting up a “gas bank”. Later, the generation of electricity forced Enron to explore new industrial customers for its gas. From 1990 to 2000, Enron largely expanded their oversea business. In 1994, Enron began buying and selling electricity. After Skilling became the COO and Fastow became the CFO of the company, Enron continued to implement dual strategies of expanding its trading activities and synchronously investing a lot of money in physical assets. Enron’s shares, in the late 1990s, had significantly outperformed the market even when the market fell.
The Enron Corporation started in 1985 when Houston Natural Gas merged with InterNorth, a Nebraska based Company. Enron was known as the ‘Americas Most Innovative company’ for 6 consecutive years.”(Folger). The reason Enron was so innovative is because it completely changed the way the energy industry was run. Kenneth Lay, Enron’s CEO hired consultant Jeffrey Skilling to completely change the business strategy that the company was run on. They started taking advantage of the fact that energy industry because deregulated and “created a ‘gas bank’ in which Enron would buy gas from a network of suppliers and sell it to a network of consumers, contractually guaranteeing both the supply and the price, charging fees for
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
Enron Corporation was formed as the result of the July 1985 merger of Houston National Gas and InterNorth of Omaha, Nebraska. Their headquarters were located in Houston, TX. In its earlier years, Enron was a
Enron was an admired company prior to 2000 because at that time it surfaced as a frontrunner in the deregulated energy market, making it possible to sell energy at higher prices, thus significantly increasing its revenue. The company, through efficient management team, has built leading businesses in energy trading and international energy asset construction. The company has managed to maintain high return from its investments through ideal placement of resources by creating long term and fixed price contracts with clients that guaranteed stable
Needed for the Houston office of Andersen, an audit partner that understands the role of being a "public watchdog" with "ultimate allegiance to the creditors and shareholders" . Arthur Anderson abandoned its roles as independent auditor by turning a blind eye to improper accounting, including the failure to consolidate, failure of Enron to make $51million in proposed adjustments in 1997, and failure to adequately disclose the nature of transactions with subsidiaries . Another example is Lord Wakeham joined Enron as a non-executive director in 1994 and also sat on Enron's audit and compliance committee. In addition, Andersen also provides internal audit service to Enron, which in fact impact
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).
Before going bankrupt in 2001 Enron Corporation was one of the biggest incorporated natural gas and electricity companies on earth. It dealt with selling natural gas liquids worldwide, and operated one of the biggest natural gas transmission systems in the world. They had become one of the largest developers and producers of electricity in the world, and supplied industrial and evolving markets including individual consumers. Enron was a major dealer of solar and wind renewable energy globally, had a strong risk management service for a large collection of its natural gases contracts, and was one of the biggest oil and gas exploring companies around the world. They were the leading wholesale marketer of natural gas and electricity in the
Jeffrey Skilling joined the Enron team as CEO shortly after. Under his leadership Enron adopted the accounting method mark-to-market which allowed the company to report potential future profits on the same day a deal was signed. No matter what their actual profits were, on paper, they could be whatever the company decided. This easily manipulative system contributed majorly to Enron’s eventual downfall.
Enron was one of Andersen’s largest customers that relied on the Arthur Andersen’s firm for accounting, auditing, and consulting advice. Arthur Andersen violated its legal responsibility when company officials directed employees to shred all documents relating to the Enron audits, after its lawyers determined an SEC investigation into their accounting practices was inevitable. As it turned out, this had a very adverse effect on the firm’s ability to continue practicing, its reputable reputation was publicly dismantled, and led to the eventual collapse of the firm. This impacted its management planning because the firm initially adhered to the company’s file retention policy, but only destroyed the Enron documents when it knew these documents will become potentially damaging to the firm. The firm knew of its legal obligation and shoul have followed the legal guidance that would have prevented the destruction of documents having knowledge of of the potential or impending litigation.
Accounting scandals have happened in numerous companies. In one major case, the firm filed for bankruptcy, and many of its workers lost their jobs, savings, and investments from stocks. This major epidemic happen at Enron, an energy firm stationed in Houston, Texas founded by Kenneth Lay in 1986 (Frontain). On December 2, 2001, the Enron Corporation, an apparently strong and booming business, fell to an all-time low by shocking the world when it filed for bankruptcy protection. Many people were left unemployed and without their savings. Because of this scandal, numerous effects were left on the accounting profession since the scandal was traced to the company’s financial reports, accountants, and auditors (Buckstein Part 2, p.1).