...SYNOPSIS In the early 1990s, Enron International entered into an agreement to build two gas fired power plants in India. The plants would help supply electricity in a country whose rapidly growing power needs were far exceeding existing generating capacity. The plants were to be gas fired, receiving a portion of the gas from Indian fields and a portion from a facility Enron was building in Qatar. While the general idea behind the projects had been approved at the highest levels of the federal government, final approval on many aspects needed to be approved by local bureaucrats. One of the plants, Dabhol, was located on India’s fast growing western seaboard near Bombay. Receiving approval was a slow process that was helped by the fact that the state government was run by the same Congress Party as controlled the federal government. During early stages of the project, state elections took place. The opposition party took the position that this was a corrupt project, with bribes and favors going to Congress party officials. When the Congress Party lost the state elections, the new administration decided to pull the plug on the project. Although investigations showed no bribes had taken place, the new government needed to assert its authority. Enron responded on multiple fronts. It filed a lawsuit for breach of contract, which required that the state reimburse Enron $300-800 million. On legal grounds its position seemed very strong. It also appealed directly...
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...Quindo, Rizalyn F. BSA IV-A 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. –Audit of financial statements –Inspection of accounting procedures –Professional consultancy in tax and other accounting procedures In the audit of financial statements, there are greater risks, given that one wrong accounting procedure can place the company into trouble and can also result in bankruptcy. Manipulations of these data are likely to show up when it is audited with reasonable assurance and with more precision. When it comes to inspection of accounting procedures, there are certain threats, given the decision that matter. Hence, inspection of accounting procedures makes it more treatable in case of errors that can impact the company and audit client. But the threat of SPEs (special purpose entities) displays some manipulation from the part of the audit firm that also with prior knowledge of accounting ethics, which at most times makes it more risky, given the legal involvement. Lastly, manipulations are also likely to occur as the biggest threat in the audit consultancy services. So, professional ethics are likely to arise. Hence, self-governance is largely a matter that can pose greater risk. When it matters to preparation and retention of audit work paper, the requirement prepare by auditor should be in a manner that it helps the auditors to carry out auditing services in the most appropriate way. Hence the working paper requirement at most should avoid accumulating unnecessary...
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...1. Perform an initial ratio analysis with Enron’s 2000 10-K Report, using the “Irrational Ratios”, the “Key Ratios for Investing” and the “Emerging Ratios”. Irrational Ratios Days Sales in Receivable Index | 1.376 | *This could be a red flag because this comes in closer to the mean manipulators index than the non-manipulators index. | | | | Gross Margin Index | 2.144 | *This is definitely a red flag because it is much higher than the average manipulators index of 1.193. | | | | Asset Quality | 0.7714 | *Not a red flag because it is smaller than the mean non-manipulators index. | | | | Sales Growth Index | 2.513 | *This is also a red flag because it is much higher than the mean manipulators index. | | | | Total Accruals to Total Assets Index | -0.0121 | *TATA is not a red flag because it is very close to the non-manipulators index. | Key Ratios for Investing Price/Book | 5.597 | | | | *Red flag because industry average is only between 2 and 3. | Price/Earnings | 71.429 | | | | *Red flag because average is between 20 and 25 which is significantly lower. | Price/Sales | 0.637 | | | | *Not a red flag because this falls below the benchmark of 1.9. | Price/Cash Flow | 13.433 | | | | *Not a red flag because this falls below the benchmark of 15.1. | Profit Margin | 0.9713% | | | | *Red flag because this does not fall within the benchmark of 4%-8%. | Top-Line Growth | 151.269% | | | | *Red flag because...
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...Alyssa Filkins Module 11 – Enron Professor White 07/16/2014 1) The Enron debacle created what one public official reported was a "crisis of confidence" on the part of the public in the accounting profession. List the parties who you believe were most responsible for that crisis. Briefly justify each of your choices. Arthur Andersen & Co. – This company that started many years ago preached about honesty, integrity, and a strong work ethic. Through their motto that was widely portrayed and talked about, they instilled trust with their clients, auditors, regulators, and potential investors. When their significant role in Enron’s downfall and in turn, fraudulent practices, was brought to light, it was shocking that a company with such high ethical standards would fall short of anything less than what they preached since day one. By preaching such high standards and doing the opposite, the confidence in all companies of the like certainly decreased. Of course, the chief officers/executives were responsible for the fraudulent financial reporting and therefore, confidence crisis. Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andrew Fastow intentionally participated in financial reporting tactics that violated GAAP and general ethical standards. This caused such a crisis because investors, clients, and the general people expected a lot of ethical success from Enron and Andersen because they appeared to be doing good, legitimate day to day business and spoke very highly of...
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...INTRODUCTION Enron was formed during 1985. Enron was a very powerful company that was doing very well in the market. Enron had been a power supplier to utilities. Its business began through the merger of Houston Natural Gas and Omaha-based Inter North. In the following 20 years, Enron grew quickly and became the largest energy trader in the world. By the end of the twenty century, Enron had many honorable titles, such as “one of the world’s leading electricity, natural gas, and communications companies”, “the world most admired corporations”, and so on. In the following years, with the increase of competition, Enron decided to use diversification and international investment to keep its market position. Actually, these activities brought Enron an unexpected large amount of losses rather than profits. In 1999, after a foray into fiber optics and the broadband market, which was a wrong decision again, Enron suffered too many substantial losses and began bleeding quickly. However, Enron had never declared any information about its losses until October 2001. Instead, in these years, Enron achieved a phenomenal bottom-line through overstating revenues and hiding liabilities. Besides manipulated the financial statements, Enron never mentioned the risks which it should disclose to its investors. On the contrary, the executives of Enron disclosed a great earnings forecast through the media and encouraged investors to purchase Enron’s stocks. They also suggested their...
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...MA BA 446 Auditing Theory and Practice Case 1- Enron Corporation Spring 2015 The Enron case was different than any other scandal because was the biggest of its time and legislations like Sarbanes Oxley Act was passed to prevent future business frauds. The arrogant tactics of Jeffrey Skilling and the apparent ignorance of Kenneth Lay further contributed to an unhealthy corporate culture that encouraged cutting corners and falsifying information to inflate earnings. Allegations about illegal transactions and investments were approved by one or more auditors. Lay believed transactions were legal because accountants had approved them, he had already been informed that there were problems with some investments. One big evidence and mistake was that Andersen earned $52 million in fees by doing the Enron books. The PCAOB oversees the audits of public companies in order to protect the interests of investors. The AICPA made several new Statements on Auditing Standards in response to the Enron events. The three that appear to be most closely linked to the Enron and Andersen debacle are SAS 96, SAS 98, and SAS 99. The FASB imposed stricter accounting and financial reporting guidelines on SPEs. Changes to the relationship between GAAS and quality control standards. In 2002, biggest change is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The SOA requires companies to reevaluate its internal audit procedures and make sure that everything is running up to or exceeding the expectations of the auditors....
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...“Enron Corporation was one of the largest integrated natural gas and electricity companies in the world. It marketed natural gas liquids worldwide and operated one of the largest natural gas transmission systems in the world”(“History of Enron Cooperation”, n.d.). Serving both industrial and emerging markets, Enron was known to be one of the largest independent developers and producers of electricity in the world, employing over 20,000 employees. This enormous company was a major supplier of solar and wind renewable energy, managing the largest portfolio of natural gas related risk management contracts and was one of the world biggest independent oil and gas exploration companies (“History of Enron Cooperation”, n.d.). Enron originated in 1985 with the merging of Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, Kenneth Lay, who was the CEO for Houston Natural Gas went across as the CEO for Enron after the merge and later won as Chairman of the Board. The natural gas company quickly began diverting in different fields such as broadband service and Enron Online, which was a website used for trading commodities. Enron Online evolved into the greatest business site in the world, generating approximately 90% of the company’s revenue (Mercer, R., 2006). Enron growth and success came very quickly in 2000; their annual earning was $100 billion, with a net income of $1.3 billion, ranking them sixth as the world’s largest energy company on Fortune 500 (Merger, R., 2006”). Enron held the title...
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...Enron Case Study Seven years after the fact, the story of the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of the Enron Corporation continues to capture the imagination of the general public. What really happened with Enron? Outside of those associated with the corporate world, either through business or education, relatively few people seem to have a complete sense of the myriad people, places, and events making up the sixteen years of Enron’s existence as an American energy company. Some argue Enron’s record-breaking bankruptcy and eventual demise was the result of a lack of ethical corporate behavior attributed, more generally, to capitalism’s inability to check the unmitigated growth of corporate greed. Others believe Enron’s collapse can be traced back to questionable accounting practices such as mark-to-market accounting and the utilization of Special Purpose Entities (SPE’s) to hide financial debt. In other instances, people point toward Enron’s mismanagement of risk and overextension of capital resources, coupled with the stark philosophical differences in management that existed between company leaders, as the primary reasons why the company went bankrupt. Yet, despite these various analyses of why things went wrong, the story of Enron’s rise and fall continues to mystify the general public as well as generate continued interest in what actually happened. The broad purpose of this paper is to investigate the Enron scandal from variety perspectives. The paper begins with a narrative...
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...Enron Case ACC 304 1. What led to the collapse of Enron under Lay and Skilling? There were various reasons as to why Enron collapsed under Lay and Skilling. One reason Enron collapsed under Lay is because Lay simply did not practice what he preached. Lay did not live by his code of ethics and neither did his corporation. Not only that, but Lay and top management gave Andrew Fastow an exemption to the code of ethics to continue doing business. Another reason that Enron collapsed, under Skilling, is that Skilling had a performance evaluation process for all Enron employees that didn’t express the code of ethics that they should’ve followed which caused employees to rank their peers lower as to enhance their own position in the firm. 2. How did the top leadership at Enron undermine the foundational values of the Enron Code of Ethics? The top leadership at Enron undermined the foundational values by granting an exemption to Andrew Fastow to continue bringing in dirty money through his actions. Also, the top leadership allowed an unethical culture of ethics by promoting to the employees that they had to make the numbers literally any way they could even if that meant to break the law. 3. Given Kenneth Lay’s and Jeff Skilling’s operating beliefs and the Enron Code of Ethics, what expectations regarding ethical decisions and actions should Enron’s employees reasonably have had? Enron had a great and respected code of ethics among its peers. Also, Lay and Skilling had respectable...
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...KaWanda Martin Enron Case January 29,2013 1. The parties that I feel are most responsible for that crisis include: Enron’s top executives, Kenneth Lay, Jeffery Skilling, and Andrew Fastow. Top management made the decisions to acquire the SPEs and to record the transactions of Enron stock for notes receivables. These notes were recorded in the assets section of the balance sheet rather than a reduction to owner’s equity. Kenneth Lay was responsible for not addressing the situation when Sherron Watkins sent him a letter with her concerns. It was his responsibility to speak tackle the situation. The letter clearly expresses Watkins’ concerns with the SPEs including Braveheart, Rawhide, Raptor, Condor, and Talon. Andrew Fastow was the Chief Financial Officer; therefore, he should have been more aware. Apparently Fastow knew about the various SPEs because he named them after his children. Arthur Andersen & Co. was responsible for auditing the financial statements of Enron and should have been more aware. Their knowledge and expertise of accounting practices should have alerted them to the various SPEs and their treatment. They should have been more thorough in their investigation. Even when they did discover Enron’s treatment and communicated those thoughts, Enron did not address the issue. AA then had the responsibility to disconnect their firm from the audit. 2. Three types of consulting services that audit firms have provided to their audit clients...
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...Enron Case The internal controls that were ignored when LJM1 was created were one, LJM’s books were kept separate from Enron's. LJM1 ignored some of Enron’s entries in the books that were missing. Outsiders owned less than 3% of the Special Purpose Entities equities. There was an error made by Arthur Andersen to let LJM’s financial statement to remain unconsolidated. If the financial statements had been consolidated, some of the errors could have been found. They may have even had some time to correct these errors before that had gotten so far out of control. There was not governing controls in place and fraudulent activities were unlimited. Andrew Fastow created LJM1 to handle investments with Rhythms NetConnections, high-speed Internet service provider. The stock that they bought at $10 million was worth $300 million after a year. Enron tried to sell the stocks to an investor, in case the stock price dropped. They could not find an investor to purchase the stock at the put option because of the risks that was involved. This is a clear violation as it created a scenario where Enron was basically insuring itself, and therefore, without insurance Enron's harsh performance review could have significantly aided their company, because the performance review was so strict that if someone was not performing in a given period of time, they would indicate a poor rating to that employee and fire them. Enron harsh performance review committee aided company executives in committing fraud...
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...Licensed to: iChapters User CASE 1.1 Enron Corporation John and Mary Andersen immigrated to the United States from their native Norway in 1881. The young couple made their way to the small farming community of Plano, Illinois, some 40 miles southwest of downtown Chicago. Over the previous few decades, hundreds of Norwegian families had settled in Plano and surrounding communities. In fact, the aptly named Norway, Illinois, was located just a few miles away from the couple’s new hometown. In 1885, Arthur Edward Andersen was born. From an early age, the Andersens’ son had a fascination with numbers. Little did his parents realize that Arthur’s interest in numbers would become the driving force in his life. Less than one century after he was born, an accounting firm bearing Arthur Andersen’s name would become the world’s largest professional services organization with more than 1,000 partners and operations in dozens of countries scattered across the globe. Think Straight, Talk Straight Discipline, honesty, and a strong work ethic were three key traits that John and Mary Andersen instilled in their son. The Andersens also constantly impressed upon him the importance of obtaining an education. Unfortunately, Arthur’s parents did not survive to help him achieve that goal. Orphaned by the time he was a young teenager, Andersen was forced to take a fulltime job as a mail clerk and attend night classes to work his way through high school. After graduating from high school,...
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...Enron Case 10.8.2014 Melissa Becker Boya Du Sidi (Fiona) Chen Wei (David) Yu In June of 2001 Enron’s new CEO, Jeff Skilling, was heralded as the “No. 1 CEO in the entire country and Enron was saluted as “America’s most innovated company.” Just six months later, in December, Enron filed for bankruptcy. The failure shocked the public and angered investors. How could this have happened? Did no one see this coming? Where were the accountants? Where were the controls? Enron’s public troubles began on October 16th of 2001 when management released a third quarter earnings report with a “mysterious $1.2 billion dollar reduction.” The following month the company restated earnings for the previous five years and erased $600 million in profits. It turned out that the October report began to reveal Enron’s gross abuse of special-purpose entities (SPEs) and the mark-to-market accounting method. The company used SPEs to keep enormous amounts of losses off its books while inflating earnings from supply contracts by booking all profits from a contract in the quarter the deal was made. What also became clear was that Enron did not accomplish their gross manipulations without the help from their accountant’s at Arthur Andersen. Enron shareholders and executives were not the only groups negatively affected by Enron’s aggressive accounting practices. Arthur Andersen was also unraveled because of the role it played in Enron’s materially misstated financial statements. In a letter to...
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...EMBA - OT “GLOBAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK & STRATEGIES” INDIVIDUAL PAPER “ ENRON CASE” Name : Suharto NIM : 13262051 “ Analyze Enron’s Case as PTCV according to the 5 Theory in and Relation to Act no 40/2007” Executive Summary Piercing the corporate veil is the judicial act of imposing personal liability on otherwise immune corporate officers, directors, and shareholders for the corporation’s wrongful act (Black Law Dictionary). In other words, courts may pierce the "veil" that the law uses to divide the corporation (and its liabilities and assets) from the people behind the corporation. The veil creates a separate, legally recognized corporate entity and shields the people behind the corporation from personal liability. In Enron Case , mulltiple corporate governance mechanisms, both internal and external, failed to constrain the actions of Enron's management team: • In particular, Enron's board failed to oversee management and apparently did not understand the risks inherent in the firm's business strategy. • It also appears that several board members and the external auditor faced potential conflicts of interest that attenuated their role as monitors. • Further, the board, analysts (credit and equity), external auditors, and federal agencies failed to identify problems at Enron or did not respond to obvious signs that there were problems at the firm. • Finally, Enron's role as a dominant player in nascent and inefficient markets, afforded the firm's management the opportunity to...
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...Perspectives on Accounting Education Volume 3, 2006, 27-48 ENRON AND ARTHUR ANDERSEN: THE CASE OF THE CROOKED E AND THE FALLEN A Gary M. Cunningham Visiting Professor Department of Business Administration Åbo Akademi University Turku, Finland Jean E. Harris Accounting Department Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg Campus School of Business Administration Middletown, Pennsylvania USA ABSTRACT Outside the US, the failures of Enron and Arthur Andersen remain puzzles. How could the accounting and audit failures associated with Enron and Arthur Andersen happen in the US where auditing is sophisticated, accounting principles are strong, and disclosure is emphasized? This is a teaching case for persons outside the US to review the financial reporting and auditing issues related to Enron and to explain the regulation of accounting and auditing in the US. It has broad implications for corporate governance and accounting regulation in other countries as well. n the years after the Enron Corporation declared bankruptcy in 2001 and Arthur Andersen failed in 2002, people are still asking, especially those outside the US, how could this happen? What went wrong? The US has a well-developed set of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) that requires extensive disclosures in audited financial statements, and a well-established federal agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that monitors financial reporting. This case is written for accounting students and others, who are...
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