The Fall of Enron

1. Introduction
Although Enron went bankrupt and disappeared ten years ago, the impacts it has made on the ethical standards never faded. It took Enron 16 years to go from about ten billion dollar assets to more than sixty-five billion dollar assets, and took twenty-four days to go bankrupt. (McLean & Elkind, 2004)
Enron, which once ranked as the seventh-largest company on the Fortune 500 and ranked as the sixth-largest energy company in the world, on December 2, 2001, filed for bankruptcy protection in the biggest case of bankruptcy in the United States up to that point (Jennings, 2009, p. 285). By November 2001, the company’s stock, which once peaked at $90 US, was down to less than $1 US. It was a disaster for the thousands of employees and investors (Skilling v. United States, 2010). Employees lost their jobs and pensions, and investors lost billions of dollars.
The Enron scandal is one that left a deep and ugly scar on the face of modern business. In this article, the facts of Enron’s case were reviewed and the major ethical issues involved in Enron’s scandal were analyzed. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The second part is a brief summary of what has happened in Enron. The third part described the role of Arthur Andersen (AA) in the Enron scandal. In the following parts the culture of Enron, the important people involved in this case, and also the major ethical issues about this scandal were analyzed. At last, the conclusion part discussed what we should do to avoid another Enron. 1. 2. Statements of Facts
2.1. A Brief History of Enron
Since found in 1985 as an interstate pipeline company, Enron had been a power supplier to utilities. Its business began through the merger of Houston Natural Gas and Omaha-based InterNorth. In the following 20 years, Ernon grew quickly and became the largest