Enron

Enron Corporation’s failure in the year of 2001 has become a depiction of unethical corporate behavior for years to come. After having watched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; I found many organizational communications course concepts could be brought to our attention within the documentary. To further our understanding, I will offer my insight as to how class-related concepts connect with the documentary by discussing how Enron developed strong organizational values by identifying certain heroes and their stories that developed their sense of strong risk taking as well as discussing Enron’s “rank and yank” system that can be asserted with F.W. Taylor’s work within

Enron used this loop hole and began to take many assets and liabilities off its balance sheet and into that of SPE’s, so as to be able to access more capital and significantly reduce its risks. It specifically used these SPE’s to borrow funds directly from outside lenders by supplying its own credit and using its high stock prices as guarantees. Enron took full advantage of accounting limitations in managing its earnings and balance sheet to portray a rosy picture of its performance.

Even the small profits reported by Enron in 2000 were eventually determined to be only a illusion by court-appointed bankruptcy examiner Neal Batson. Batson’s report reveals that over 95% of the reported profits in these two years were attributed to Enron’s misuse of MTM and other accounting techniques. But while financial analysts could not be expected to know that the company illegally manipulated the earnings, the reported profit margins in 2000 were so low and were declining so steadily that they should have merited ample skepticism from analysts about the company’s profits.

White collar crimes are occurring without anyone realizing it. Who has the time or the energy to make sure that all the big companies are following exactly what they are suppose to do. After reading the text as well as watching the movie, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” it allowed me to ponder the idea, what can be done to limit/lessen the amount of white collar crime occurring.

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.

The agencies not only discovered the complex web of fictitious partnerships that hid Enron’s massive debt but also that the company’s external accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, was creating materially false and misleading audit reports. . The true nature of Enron’s massive financial losses was shown to the public and the stock price plunged, causing investors to lose billions of dollars. Enron, however, was just the first and largest scandal to become public. Numerous companies including Tyco, WorldCom, and Kmart were found to have inflated earnings (Martin & Combs, 2010, 103). Investors had been manipulated to invest into companies that followed unethical business practice thereby shattering future investor confidence.

In the case of Enron’s collapse, many would blame the external auditor’s collusion with the management, the aggressive accounting policy it had adopted to manipulate its earnings or the Special Purpose Entity (SPE) it had created as a sham to conceal its debts. However, everything began from an internal environment with weak controls.

Enron neglected two vital internal controls when it found the LJM1 SPE. On one hand, Enron’s board of directors waived the Code of Conduct of the company, which prohibited the existence of LJM1, and approved the SPE’s creation. On the other hand, by appointing Andrew Fastow to operate the SPE, Enron breached the SEC’s rule that company executives are not permitted to control separate entities if those entities are directly related to the company. If they had heeded the protective internal controls established by the company and the SEC, Enron executives may likely to avoid the fraud that caused its eventual corporate

Enron was being named by Fortune “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six executive years. However, under the mask of being one of the world’s major electricity, natural gas, communication, pulp and paper companies, they were revealed that their financial condition was planned accounting fraud. They are driven by the profit impulsion and distorted moral philosophies. Traders are direct people who move power around west and make profit for Enron. In order to meet Enron’s objective, they contempt any value except making money.

Imagine over $60 billion of shareholder value, almost $2.1 billion in pension plans, and initially 5,600 jobs - disappeared (Associated Press, 2006). One would have to wonder how that is possible. These are the consequences the investors and employees of Enron Corporation endured after the Enron scandal started to unravel. This paper will focus on the infamous accounting scandal of Enron Corporation. It will also discuss how the company was able to fool investors by producing misleading financial statements, why they were not caught sooner, and new regulations enacted in response to the scandal.

Research has shown that companies with poor financial performance and financial uncertainty are more likely to commit illegal acts (Lawrence & Weber 77). After several unsuccessful attempts to make a profit through spending billions of dollars building a power plant in India and entering the bandwidth market, Enron aggregated a debt of 30 billion (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). Under high pressure to generate profit and keep the stock price up, Enron controlled the power they supplied to California residents. Enron reduced the power supply by exporting supply to other states. Consequently, electricity prices were driven up, forcing Californians to pay more. Moreover, traders at Enron realized that by simply shutting down some of Enron's

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'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.

Listed next are key audit risk factors that were present during the 1988 and 1989 AMRE

Enron, once known as the worldwide leader in energy trading, began as a natural gas pipeline company. “At its peak, Enron brokered up to 20 percent of America’s energy transactions. These included basic contracts to deliver natural gas from wells to pipelines for distribution to homes, contracts for the purchase of electrical power facility out port, and more complex financial contracts, which allowed power companies to manage price and market risk” (Ackman).