Raul E Guzman
Legotte Jr Leonard
ITT Technical Institute
AC1320
02-22-2015
One of the 10 Worst Corporate
Scandals of All Times From the 1990's until the fall of 2001, Enron was famous throughout the business world and was known as an innovator, technology powerhouse, and a corporation with no fear. The sudden fall of Enron in the end of 2001 shattered not just the business world but also the lives of their employees and the people who believed that their soar to greatness was genuine. Their collapse was followed by a series of revelations on how they manipulated their success. Introduction Enron shocked the world from being “America’s most innovative company” to America's biggest corporate bankruptcy at its time. At its peak, Enron was America's seventh largest corporation. Enron gave the illusion that it was a steady company with good revenue but that was not the case, a large part of Enron’s profits were made of paper. This was made possible by masterfully designed accounting and morally questionable acts by traders and executives. Deep debt and surfacing information about hiding losses gave the company big problems and in the late 2001 Enron declared bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. Many factors affected Enron's surge to the top and its sudden fall. In this report we will discuss and present what we think were the main reasons of their rise and fall. Enron’s surge to the top From energy to trading Kenneth Lay was one of the key spokesmen when it came to deregulation of the energy market, much because of his personal connection to the Bush family. In the early 1990's the United States congress approved a legislation that deregulated the sale of natural gas. Not long before this Lay was one of the initiators that made it possible to sell electricity on the free market. This major deregulation in the energy market gave Enron