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, Andersen attended the University of Illinois while working as an accountant for Allis-Chalmers, a Chicago-based company that manufactured tractors and other farming equipment. In 1908, Andersen accepted a position with the Chicago office of Price Waterhouse. At the time, Price Waterhouse, which was organized in Great Britain during the early nineteenth century, easily qualified as the United States’ most prominent public