...Business Failure Enron xxxxxxxxxx University of Phoenix Online February xx, xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx Examining a Business Failure: Enron This paper will discuss the contributions of leadership, management, and organizational structures that led to the demise of Enron. The structures will also be compared and contrasted to help better understand why the company failed. Enron Corporation was founded in Omaha Nebraska 1985 and was defunct on December 2, 2001. In the year 2000 Enron had published revenues of $101 billion and employed approximately 22,000 employees. The Company’s founder and CEO was Kenneth Lay Other notable people who lead Enron where Jeffery Skilling, Andres Fastow, Rebecca Mark-Jusbasche. Fortune magazine nominated Enron as “Americas Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years. At the end of 2001 it was discovered that Enron had been creatively distributing its debt through fraudulent planned Accounting making the company seem very profitable in previous years ("Enron", 2012). Leadership, Management, and Organizational Structures (contributed to the failure) Leadership has many different definitions; one definition is “the behavior of an individual directing the activities of a group toward a shared goal. (Hemphill & Coons, 1957, pg 7). This definition is closely is related and applies to Enron’s leadership, Management and structure. Enron’s leadership...
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...Enron – Unethical Financial Accounting Overview In 2001, Enron $111billion US energy firm employing 20,000 people worldwide collapsed and filed for bankruptcy, stemming from one of the largest and most complex corporate accounting scandals seen in corporate America. Involving senior managers like Jeffery Skilling (COO), Andrew Fastow (CFO) and Kenneth Lay (CEO and Chairman) and Arthur Anderson (Accounting Firm), jointly they orchestrated false balance sheets to report false earnings and inflated profits to push stock prices higher. Top management earned large bonuses in stocks and incentives based on revenues reported by division. Enron executives pushed up stock prices by reporting false/unrealised profits for years, thereby making top managers vastly wealthy. Finally, when news of the scandal got out on Wall Street, Enron filed for bankruptcy, stocks prices crashed - thousands of Enron employees lost their pension funds4, shareholders and creditors lost billions of dollars in investments. Key Agents (Active and Passive) and Ethical Issues Andrew Fastow (CFO): Andrew Fastow created Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) which were used by Enron to hide large liabilities and turn them into revenue through complex financial transactions, thereby inflating top line and bottom-line for Enron5. He also started working on a controversial concept of accounting - mark to market3, whereby any potential of future earnings could be reported as revenues today which enabled Enron to report future...
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... Erik Seigle Law 2150 11/24/15 Ethics Reflection Enron was a company that reached dramatic heights, only to see itself crumple from within through lies and deceit. Enron created a corporate culture that thrived on competition and was often seen as arrogant. The story of Enron ends with one of the largest bankruptcies in american history. The collapse of Enron affected the lives of thousands of employees, pension funds, and ultimately shook wall street to its core. Many people still wonder how a company so powerful fell so quickly. Enron’s demise was a result of the greed of a few Enron executives who were unwilling to see their company fail. They used marktomarket accounting which recorded the expected future revenue from a longterm deal (seabury). These deals often resulted in losses, not revenue. This caused Enron to accumulate massive amounts of debt which they tried to hide from the public. Eventually the truth would come to fruition. Enron was a company built on lies and deceit. Their stockholders and employees, like the prisoners in Plato’s cave myth took all the information they were provided at face value. Employees believed in Lay as he frequently encouraged them to “talk up” the stock, and spoke of the safe and sound trajectory of the company. Unfortunately for the employees, they had to stand by helplessly and watch their retirement funds evaporate while top Enron officers cashed in on their lucrative stocks 2 ...
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...Accounting scandals are political or business scandals which arise with the disclosure of financial misdeeds by trusted executives of corporations or governments. Such misdeeds typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of corporate assets or underreporting the existence of liabilities, sometimes with the cooperation of officials in other corporations or affiliates. In public companies, this type of "creative accounting" can amount to fraud, and investigations are typically launched by government oversight agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States. Causes: It is fairly easy for a top executive to reduce the price of his/her company's stock – due to information asymmetry. The executive can accelerate accounting of expected expenses, delay accounting of expected revenue, engage in off balance sheet transactions to make the company's profitability appear temporarily poorer, or simply promote and report severely conservative (e.g. pessimistic) estimates of future earnings. Such seemingly adverse earnings news will be likely to (at least temporarily) reduce share price. (This is again due to information asymmetries since it is more common for top executives to do everything they can to window dress their company's earnings forecasts). There are typically very few legal risks to being 'too conservative' in one's accounting and earnings estimates...
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...downfall of Enron. When he became the CFO in 1998, he came up with the plan to make the company appear in great shape by using the mark-to-market accounting practice. The company would build an asset, such as a power plant, and immediately claim the projected profit on its books, even though it hadn't made one dime from it. If the revenue from the power plant was less than the projected amount, instead of taking the loss, the company would then transfer these assets to an off-the-books corporation, where the loss would go unreported. This type of accounting created the attitude that the company did not need profits, and that, by using the mark-to-market method, Enron could basically write off any loss without hurting the company's bottom line (Seabury, 2014). SEC and FASB are also key. In the early 1990s, the SEC and FASB had wrestled with the controversial accounting and financial reporting issues of SPEs. There was intense debate but the SEC and FASB did not offer guidance or a solution. SEC and FASB were fully aware there was concern with this reporting but did not take it very seriously and let it slide by. Arthur Anderson is also a key. The auditors did work for Enron but they are also to guide the company in the right direction of financials. With the use of the SPEs and mark-to-market accounting, it was kind of a loophole in financial reporting. Since can report and not report assets and liabilities in SPEs, auditors were aware of the shift of these items from Enron to the...
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...energy and commodities firm Enron collapsed under the weight of a massive fraud, much has changed about how corporate America does business and much, unfortunately, has remained the same, with new frauds and excessive risk-taking exposed all too frequently. "We did learn some lessons and people were more careful, but greed creeps back in again," said Lawrence Weiss, professor of international accounting at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Before the bankruptcy of WorldCom in 2002, Enron's bankruptcy was the largest in U.S. history. Names like AIG and WorldCom may have replaced Enron in the vernacular when referring to corporate meltdowns and greed. Enron executives Kenneth Lay, Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow -- all convicted of white collar crimes -- emblemized the bad side of the one percent before the term existed. Once the darling of Wall Street, Enron was the country's seventh-largest company with a soaring stock price that grew more than 100 percent in 2000. The company collapsed in a matter of months as the media and the public became aware of its faulty accounting and business practices. Conflicts of interest continue to occur Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the permanent subcommittee on investigations which reported on the role of Enron's board and investment banks' response to lessons learned from Enron, said the Enron scandal did not put an end to corporate malfeasance.. "One lesson we haven't learned from Enron is that corporations will...
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...1. Enron, an international energy company, faced a lot of business risks because of the industry they were in. Enron’s business model, an intermediary between buyers and sellers of energy and profiting off the price differences, was risky in itself because it exposed Enron to energy prices risks as well a fluctuating foreign currency. While continuing to expand their business, Enron began offering a variety of financial hedges and contracts to their customers. This new venture uncovered interest rate risks, environmental risks, and constant price wars. Enron Online launched in 1999, which revealed dangerous technological failure risks. Enron decided to use Special Purpose Entities for borrowed funds. These SPEs were a great risk because the likelihood of materially misstating their financial statements increased significantly due to liabilities not being reported as cash inflows were coming in. These SPEs, as well as many other business endeavors by Enron, relied heavily on their guarantees of stock. If stock prices were to fall under a certain level, obligations made by Enron would become payable (Seabury). Once Enron’s risks were realized the company experienced pressure to report more stable and prosperous financial statements. They wanted to continue attracting investors and increase their competiveness in the marketplace, which drove management to enter into aggressive accounting schemes that ultimately led to their downfall in 2001. 2. The case explains how Enron...
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...Kenneth Lay was convicted of six counts of fraud and conspiracy along with four counts of bank fraud. He died of a heart attack prior to the sentencing. Jeffrey Skilling was convicted of conspiracy, fraud, and insider trading. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison. Eventually, the sentence was reduced by 10 years and he was required to pay $42 million to the victims. Andrew Fastow plead guilty to counts of wire fraud and securities fraud. He served four years in prison. As a result of the Enron scandal, congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The act was created to protect investors from accounting fraud and increase investor confidence. The act includes two key provisions. Section 302 mandates that senior management certifies “(1) the report does not contain untrue statements or material omissions; (2) the financial statemen fairly present, in all material respects, the financial condition and results of operations; and (3) such officers are responsible for internal controls designed to ensure that they receive material information regarding the issuer and consolidated subsidiaries.” (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of...
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...University website at An update for this case is available at http://www.scu.edu/ethics/dialogue/candc/cases/worldcomupdate.html . Note that this update is not part of the syllabus for the PRM or Associate PRM exam. It is included for reference and explanation only.) 2002 saw an unprecedented number of corporate scandals: Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing. In many ways, WorldCom is just another case of failed corporate governance, accounting abuses, and outright greed. But none of these other companies had senior executives as colorful and likable as Bernie Ebbers. A Canadian by birth, the 6 foot, 3 inch former basketball coach and Sunday School teacher emerged from the collapse of WorldCom not only broke but with a personal net worth as a negative nine-digit number.2 No palace in a gated community, no stable of racehorses or multi-million dollar yacht to show for the telecommunications giant he created; only debts and red ink--results some consider inevitable given his unflagging enthusiasm and entrepreneurial flair. There is no question that he did some pretty bad stuff, but he really wasn't like the corporate villains of his day: Andy Fastow of Enron, Dennis Koslowski of Tyco, or Gary Winnick of Global Crossing.3 Personally, Bernie is a hard guy not to like. In 1998 when Bernie was in the midst of acquiring the telecommunications firm MCI, Reverend Jesse Jackson, speaking at an all-black college near WorldCom's Mississippi headquarters, asked how Ebbers could afford $35 billion...
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...WorldCom By Dennis Moberg (Santa Clara University) and Edward Romar (University of Massachusetts-Boston) 2002 saw an unprecedented number of corporate scandals: Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing. In many ways, WorldCom is just another case of failed corporate governance, accounting abuses, and outright greed. But none of these other companies had senior executives as colorful and likable as Bernie Ebbers. A Canadian by birth, the 6 foot, 3 inch former basketball coach and Sunday School teacher emerged from the collapse of WorldCom not only broke but with a personal net worth as a negative nine-digit number.2 No palace in a gated community, no stable of racehorses or multi-million dollar yacht to show for the telecommunications giant he created. Only debts and red ink--results some consider inevitable given his unflagging enthusiasm and entrepreneurial flair. There is no question that he did some pretty bad stuff, but he really wasn't like the corporate villains of his day: Andy Fastow of Enron, Dennis Koslowski of Tyco, or Gary Winnick of Global Crossing.3 Personally, Bernie is a hard guy not to like. In 1998 when Bernie was in the midst of acquiring the telecommunications firm MCI, Reverend Jesse Jackson, speaking at an all-black college near WorldCom's Mississippi headquarters, asked how Ebbers could afford $35 billion for MCI but hadn't donated funds to local black students. Businessman LeRoy Walker Jr., was in the audience at Jackson's speech, and afterwards set him straight...
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...Enron: Case Study 1 The purpose of this paper is to formally address the Enron scandal that came out in late 2001. It will discuss a brief introduction to how Enron came to be such a large and powerful corporation and the decisions made which resulted in its ultimate downfall. While discussing these time periods, accounting issues such as the agency and horizon problems as well as agency costs and the manner in which they affected Enron will be dissected additionally. Lastly, an analysis of these issues and recommendations given in favor of preventing types of corruption like this will be listed out in detail. The company all starts with Kenneth Lay. Lay received a PhD in economics and was interested well ahead of the industry, in energy deregulation. He was promoted by George Bush Sr. to be named as Deregulations Ambassador at Large (Gibney, 2005). In 1990, Jeff Skilling joined Enron and turned the pipeline company essentially into an “energy bank”. This helped immensely for Enron in terms of establishing themselves as a very powerful corporation. “Enron was quickly transformed from a sleepy cash cow to a darling of Wall Street with a bounty of promising opportunities.” (Stewart, 2006). Enron’s misuse of mark to market accounting became step one of a few crucial mistakes that the company had made. “With a wave of accountants’ magic wands, Enron was authorized to record in a single year all the profit that would normally be booked over 10 to 20-year...
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...University website at An update for this case is available at http://www.scu.edu/ethics/dialogue/candc/cases/worldcomupdate.html . Note that this update is not part of the syllabus for the PRM or Associate PRM exam. It is included for reference and explanation only.) 2002 saw an unprecedented number of corporate scandals: Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing. In many ways, WorldCom is just another case of failed corporate governance, accounting abuses, and outright greed. But none of these other companies had senior executives as colorful and likable as Bernie Ebbers. A Canadian by birth, the 6 foot, 3 inch former basketball coach and Sunday School teacher emerged from the collapse of WorldCom not only broke but with a personal net worth as a negative nine-digit number.2 No palace in a gated community, no stable of racehorses or multi-million dollar yacht to show for the telecommunications giant he created; only debts and red ink--results some consider inevitable given his unflagging enthusiasm and entrepreneurial flair. There is no question that he did some pretty bad stuff, but he really wasn't like the corporate villains of his day: Andy Fastow of Enron, Dennis Koslowski of Tyco, or Gary Winnick of Global Crossing.3 Personally, Bernie is a hard guy not to like. In 1998 when Bernie was in the midst of acquiring the telecommunications firm MCI, Reverend Jesse Jackson, speaking at an all-black college near WorldCom's Mississippi headquarters, asked how Ebbers could afford $35 billion...
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...Auditing 1/26/15 Enron Enron began as Northern Natural Gas in 1932. In 1979 the company reorganized and became InterNorth. InterNorth was in the business of creating energy products such as natural gas and plastics. Later InterNorth merged into what was known as Enron with the new CEO Kenneth Lay running the show. He then began moving the headquarters to Houston, where they began selling off assets to limit their losses initially. The misleading financial accounts began when Jeffrey Skilling wanting to hide their losses. He and Andrew Fastow used special purpose entities to off load liabilities to those company to keep their main business looking as if they were profiting. Which intern made them look as though their business is successful and made their stocks increase because investors saw that the business was profiting not failing. A way that they were able to show the company as profitable was transferring debits and losses to offshore businesses that made it look as though on the books they were profiting and to make those unprofitable parts of the company disappear into an offshore business. To hide their losses in the trading business Skilling used mark-to-market accounting. Mark-to-market accounting is used in the security business but what Skilling did was use it for everyday business. Doing this let them write out what they thought a certain venture would be making in the future, without having to have actually made a dime. This let Enron show on the books that...
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...An Enron Jury Free of Grudges? Easy, Judge Says! HOUSTON, Jan. 29, 2006 Chances are that in this city's pool of 2.3 million registered voters, there are at least 16 people who are not angry about the implosion of Enron, the largest business collapse in history. But finding them in a single day could be a challenge.! That has not deterred Judge Simeon T. Lake III of Federal District Court, who will begin the much-anticipated criminal trial of the former Enron chief executives Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling on Monday.! Judge Lake said in court on Thursday that he expected to choose a panel of 12 jurors and 4 alternates from 100 prospective members in one day. After examining responses to the jury questionnaires, Judge Lake indicated that he felt they did not show evidence of prejudice against the defendants. "I've been impressed by the apparent lack of bias or influence from media exposure," he said.! The lawyers defending Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling have contended for months that finding impartial jurors in Houston would be difficult, if not impossible. But the judge has rejected two requests to move the trial outside of Houston, where Enron was based, and has repeatedly denied pleas by the defense lawyers to allow them to question individual jurors during the final selection process, called voir dire.! The defense lawyers say they are deeply troubled by responses to jury questionnaires, which came back with mostly negative comments about Enron and the defendants. Many Houstonians...
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...NOTE: Facilitator noted that more indepth info would have been beneficial to this paper, so please only use this as a reference. Table of Contents 1. Assignment cover sheet p. 0 2. Title page: HealthSouth and the Scrushy Way p. 1 3. Table of Contents p. 2 4. Introduction p. 3 5. Government Subsidies p. 3 6. Signs of Corruption p. 4 7. Ethical issues of HealthSouth p. 5 8. Management of HealthSouth p. 5 9. Intimidation and Cooperation p. 6 10. Culture of Corruption p. 7 11. Lavish Lifestyle and Philanthropy p. 8 12. Impact on Stakeholders p. 9 13. Charges p. 10 14. Outcome and Fairness of Punishment p. 10 15. Conclusion p. 12 16. References p. 13 HealthSouth and the Scrushy Way Richard Scrushy overcame challenging teenage years, dropping out of high school and later obtaining his GED to become one of the most successful executives in the United States. Scrushy did so by subsequently getting his respiratory therapist certification and opening his own rehabilitation center, an all-in-one medical facility that led many to copy his idea. Scrushy founded HealthSouth in 1996 using $1 million in seed capital and turned it into a hugely successful medical services empire worth over $4 billion at its prime (Haddad, Weintraub, & Grow, 2003). HealthSouth had become...
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