...Enron and World Finance A Case Study in Ethics Edited by Paul H. Dembinski, Carole Lager, Andrew Cornford and Jean-Michel Bonvin Enron and World Finance Also by Observatoire de la Finance From Bretton Woods to Basel Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 21, Spring 2005 Ethics of Taxation and Banking Secrecy Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 12, Autumn 2002 Will the Euro Shape Europe? Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 9, Winter 2001–2 Dommen, E. (ed.) Debt Beyond Contract Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, Supplement no. 2, 2001 Bonvin, J.-M. Debt and the Jubilee: Pacing the Economy Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, Supplement no. 1, 1999 Dembinski, P. H. (leading contributor) Economic and Financial Globalization: What the Numbers Say United Nations, Geneva, 2003 Enron and World Finance A Case Study in Ethics Edited by Paul H. Dembinski Carole Lager Andrew Cornford and Jean-Michel Bonvin in association with the Observatoire de la Finance Selection, editorial matter and Chapters 1, 2 and 16 © Observatoire de la Finance Remaining chapters © contributors 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence ...
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...Enron and World Finance A Case Study in Ethics Edited by Paul H. Dembinski, Carole Lager, Andrew Cornford and Jean-Michel Bonvin Enron and World Finance Also by Observatoire de la Finance From Bretton Woods to Basel Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 21, Spring 2005 Ethics of Taxation and Banking Secrecy Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 12, Autumn 2002 Will the Euro Shape Europe? Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 9, Winter 2001–2 Dommen, E. (ed.) Debt Beyond Contract Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, Supplement no. 2, 2001 Bonvin, J.-M. Debt and the Jubilee: Pacing the Economy Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, Supplement no. 1, 1999 Dembinski, P. H. (leading contributor) Economic and Financial Globalization: What the Numbers Say United Nations, Geneva, 2003 Enron and World Finance A Case Study in Ethics Edited by Paul H. Dembinski Carole Lager Andrew Cornford and Jean-Michel Bonvin in association with the Observatoire de la Finance Selection, editorial matter and Chapters 1, 2 and 16 © Observatoire de la Finance Remaining chapters © contributors 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying...
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...The Rise and Collapse of Enron: Financial Innovation, Errors and Lessons Elisa S. Moncarz* Raúl Moncarz* Alejandra Cabello** Benjamin Moncarz*** Abstract Recent collapses of high profile business failures like Enron, Worldcom, Parmlat, and Tyco has been a subject of great debate among regulators, investors, government and academics in the recent past. Enron’s case was the greatest failure in the history of American capitalism and had a major impact on financial markets by causing significant losses to investors. Enron was a company ranked by Fortune as the most innovative company in the United States; it exemplified the transition from the production to the knowledge economy. Many lessons can we learn from its collapse. In this paper we present an analysis of the factors that contributed to Enron’s rise and failure, underlying the role that energy deregulation and manipulation of financial statements played on Enron’s demise. We summarize some lessons that can be learned in order to prevent another Enron and restore confidence in the financial markets, as well as in the accounting and auditing professions. Keywords: Enron, Corporate Ethics, Corporate Bankruptcy, Creative Accounting. Introduction T he rise and fall of high profile businesses like Enron, WorldCom, Parmlat and Tyco has been a subject of great debate and research among regulators, investors, government and academics in the recent years. Enron, for one, was the greatest failure *Professor-investigator...
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...n the late 1990’s Enron held substantial investments in several high-tech companies. Many of these stocks soared in price after their initial public offering, which allowed Enron to report very large gains on its income statement.1 However, the stocks could not be sold and the gains realized in cash because the investments were subject to lock-up agreements.2 Enron’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and others realized it was likely these investments would experience significant drops in value before they could be sold, but the investments could not be hedged commercially. Therefore, the CFO designed transactions that would, from an accounting point of view, keep the anticipated losses out of Enron’s income statement. This paper explains Enron’s hedging transactions with special purpose entities (SPEs) that allowed the company to overstate its true economic profit.3 The paper first provides an overview of risk management and explains how particular derivatives used by Enron and other companies help manage risk. The paper then analyzes Enron’s unique hedging schemes and provides insights with respect to their structure as well as the motivation for their creation. In addition, this section of the paper describes how the SPEs were used to keep losses out of Enron’s financial statements, how investors in the SPEs were provided with massive financial returns on modest investments, and why Enron’s declining stock price ultimately exposed the questionable activities of the CFO and others...
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...The Fall of Enron is a perfect example of management failure. Enron started off as a merger between Houston Natural Gas and Inter-North. A few years after the merger, Enron started changing the strategy and structure of the organization. Enron went from a raw materials management company to a company selling energy commodities. Enron proceeded to change from an energy company to a risk management firm that traded everything from commodities to derivatives. Enron failed for many reasons, ranging from organizational leadership, conflict of interest, and the off-book financials, which created an ethical disaster for the organization. Various organizational behavior lessons have learned from Enron’s fall from grace. The following paper will discuss some of the reasons for Enron’s internal combustion. Enron’s unethical organizational behavior was the main reason for allowing various illegal actions to take place, which killed the organization in the end. Organizational behavior is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness ("Enron 101," 2002, p. 41). In the demise of Enron the leaders were producing behaviors contingent on demands, constraints, and choices that affected the behavior of the organization. In Enron’s situation the demands were for the company to be successful, which affected...
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...ENRON: A CASE STUDY Q.1) Give the definition of earnings management. Discuss in what instances is earnings management acceptable and in what instances is it not acceptable? Earnings management is the process by which management can potentially manipulate the financial statements to represent what they wish to have happened during the period rather than what actually happened. Reasons why management may want to manage earnings include both internal and external pressures. Perhaps the most important section of this chapter is that of dealing with the common techniques used to manage earnings. It is through a thorough understanding of these methods that earnings management can be spotted. These strategies are important to know as an accountant, auditor, financial analyst, creditor, or investor. Healthy scepticism on the part of these various interests, and contributors, to the financial statements will further detection, and a reduction, of earnings management practices. By improving the quality of the information in financial statements, through better accounting standards and ethical behaviour, the cost of doing business decreases. Not only is this true with the cost of capital, as the chapter describes, but nowhere is it more clearly seen today than with the additional costs publicly traded companies are now faced with to come into compliance with the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Earnings management and unethical behaviour of the past is costing businesses more today...
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...investments, as well as deter fraudulent behavior. The complexity in the modern business world, and its need for transparency can be evidenced through an examination of 3 levels: company-wide, industry, and globally. Looking on a company-wide basis, a lack of transparency on the part of individual organizations can lead to fraud and unethical practices, whereas a demonstration of strong transparency reduces the impact and likelihood of scandals. Enron, a leading energy and natural gas provider was accused of an accounting fraud in 2001. One of the primary reasons that led to this scandal was Enron’s usage of special purpose entities (SPEs) to cover up debt that the company was taking upon. By hiding additional debt, the company looked favourable as an investment because of low risk. Additionally, creditors were impressed with the low debt to equity ratio and were open to the idea of lending Enron money in case the need arose. SPEs were also used to cover up any losses that the company was experiencing. As a result, the parent company, Enron, consistently reported...
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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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...STUDY:- Once the seventh largest company in America, Enron was formed in 1985 when InterNorth acquired Houston Natural Gas. The company branched into many non-energy-related fields over the next several years, including such areas as Internet bandwidth, risk management, and weather derivatives (a type of weather insurance for seasonal businesses). Although their core business remained in the transmission and distribution of power their phenomenal growth was occurring through their other interests. Fortune Magazine selected Enron as "America's most innovative company" for six straight years from 1996 to 2001. Then came the investigations into their complex network of off-shore partnerships and accounting practices The saga of the ENRON Corporation has been unfolding in the media for well over a year. In the span of only three years, ENRON has gone from public and professional acclaim of the company and its senior executives to scorn, infamy and bankruptcy. Its public auditing firm, Arthur Andersen, has basically been destroyed, as well as publicly disgraced. Tens of thousands of employees and investors have been emotionally and financially affected. Major financial services firms in banking, securities brokerage and insurance have been, and may yet be, drawn into the legal battles regarding who is to blame for the ENRON failure. Enron grew wealthy due largely to marketing, promoting power, and its high stock price. Enron was named "America's Most Innovative Company" by Fortune...
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...------------------------------------------------- ENRON SCANDAL Enron’s Accounting Methods April 30, 2015 Acct 301-d02 LUO [Company address] April 30, 2015 Acct 301-d02 LUO [Company address] Melissa Vest Liberty University I. Introduction: Enron used many legal accounting practices to commit fraudulent accounting activities II. The genius, or ingenious, accounting methods Enron used: 1. Special purpose entities a. Synthetic leases b. FAS 140’s 2. Hedges 3. Share trust transactions 4. Minority interests 5. Prepays 6. Mark-to-market 7. Stock Games III. Conclusion: The beginning of the end Enron Scandal I have always tried to do the right thing, but where there was once great pride, now it’s gone. —From the suicide note of JOHN CLIFFORD BAXTER, Enron’s former vice chairman I. Enron used many legal accounting practices to commit fraudulent accounting activities: Enron was on the road to success when only a couple bad decisions were made that seemed to cause a panic that had them hiding and covering until the hole was too deep for them to climb out of. Was it optimism or cynicism that got Enron into the mess that ultimately destroyed it? II. The genius, or ingenious, accounting methods Enron used: “Enron executives applied for – and were subsequently granted – government deregulation. As a result of this declaration of deregulation, Enron executives were permitted to maintain agency over the earnings...
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...Chapter 21 Structured Financing Techniques in Oil and Gas Project Fina.nce Future-Flow Securitizations, Prepaids, Volumetric Production Payments, and Project Finance Collateralized Debt Obligations Christopher L. Culp and J. Paul Forrester* I. INTRODUCTION Project finance is the extension of credit to finance an economic unit where the future cash flows of that unit serve as collateral for the loan. By facilitating the separation of project assets from the sponsor and enabling the financing of those assets on the basis of the cash flows they are expected to generate, project finance can allow a sponsor to undertake a project with more risk than the sponsor is otherwise willing to underwrite independently. Project finance can also help sponsors avoid incurring leverage beyond tolerable levels, thereby helping them preserve their debt capacity, credit ratings, and cash flows for alternative capital investment activities. Large-scale oil and gas projects have been popular subjects for project financing since the inception of the market. Indeed, modem project finance is thought to have begun in the 1930s when a Dallas bank extended a nonrecourse loan to finance an oil and gas project. I Project finance "came of age" in the 1970s and 1980s with the Please address correspondence to christopher.culp@chicagobooth.edu or jforrester@ mayerbrown.com. The usual disclaimer applies, and the opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of any...
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...Business Failure: Enron Chris Shealy LDR/531 August 22, 2011 Ericka Hilliard The Enron scandal was a corporate scandal involving the American energy company Enron Corporation based in Houston, Texas and the accounting, auditing and consultancy firm Arthur Andersen that was revealed in October 2001 (Wikipedia Enron Scandal 2001). All of this started when there was a loophole discovered in the accounting department when they were allowed to book large sums of money from energy-derivative contracts at their gross value and not their net value. This tactic although legal many analysts and investors saw what Enron was doing. This was called the distorting technique which allowed Enron to become one of the largest companies in the world. All of the hiding came from within Enron’s balance sheet. To let you in on Enron’s hidden success, Enron was allocating all of there money to independent private partnerships. This strategy showed that Enron’s market share was sky-rocketing to levels never seen before. The thing that was kept hidden was Enron’s asset and liability portfolio. Between 1996 and 2001, Enron reported an increase in sales from 13.3 billion to 100.8 billion (Forbes, 2001). In 2002, there were reports starting to come out about Enron’s wrongdoing. Everyone believed at the time that the Bush administration was telling the truth about what was going on at Enron. Now that Enron is bankrupt, many still believe that there was ever any wrongdoing at Enron. Even though...
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...Heidrick Dr. Dan Deines ACCTG 641 15 October 2014 The Meteoric Rise and Fall of Enron Enron was created in 1985 after a merger between Houston Natural Gas and Internorth. By 2002 it was gone forever. Its stock price rose to $90/share in August of 2000 before bottoming out at $0.40/share when they filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 2nd 2001. It only took 16 years for one of the largest Fortune 500 companies to completely dissolve, taking employee jobs, pensions, Arthur Andersen, and the American public’s faith with it. Enron and its young McKinsey consultant created the energy derivative and used it to form the new natural gas division that dominated the market. However, the use of mark-to-market accounting and the creation of Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) led to overstated profits and inaccurate balance sheets. By the fall of 2001 nobody could find out how Enron was making its money. A disclosure on the October financial statements for a $1.2 billon dollar reversal caught the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) attention. They launched an investigation and in less than two months Enron filed for bankruptcy protection. A large part of the scandal also focused around Arthur Andersen, at the time of the of the Big Five accounting firms, because of its qualified auditing opinions of Enron. It ultimately ceased to exist because of its involvement with the Enron fraud. The Enron scandal showed the public that changes in accounting and auditing standards and practices...
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...The Demise of Enron university of phoenix LDR531 July 09, 2012 The Demise of Enron Introduction: When the issues of business practices, regulation, and ethics are raised in the business world, Enron has frequently finds itself as the flagship example of irresponsibility, and intrinsic fraud. In retrospect, it is clear that Enron lacked a moral compass from the top down. In terms of organizational-behavior theories, these traits manifested themselves as a result of their corporate cognation, and organizational culture. Enrons biggest lack of business ethics was in its accounting. The deeply rooted accounting problem exposed by Enron's failure was the weak consolidation rule prescribed for highly leveraged "special purpose entities" (SPEs), or partnerships that were formed to carry out various projects whose assets and liabilities were not shown in Enron's balance sheet. Enron failed in part because of losses arising out of the many SPEs that it had created. Not only was this poor business practice, but Enron executives knowingly compromised the business so that they could maintain the stock price, and none from the accounting department or any other part of the business acted as a whistle blower or so much as questioned the practice of cooking the books. Unfortunately, these practices did not merely affect the perpetrators, is also destroyed the finances of investors, and faultless employees with stock options, as shares fell from a high near $90.00. Thus...
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...* Special Purpose entities (SPE) used to move assets and liabilities off balance sheet * Enron was finance by debt. Also, had to buy off a potential hostile bidder, hangover from merger, which cost 350 million. By 1987, Enron debt burden was to be main struggle. * Enron open office in Valhalla to trade oil and petroleum product but failed because two employees unauthorized dealing and Enron loss $85 million. * Jeffrey skilling, Harvard MBA establish “gas bank”, a mechanism to provide funding for smaller gas producers to enable them to invest more in exploration and development and provide Enron with reliable source of natural gas to feed pipeline system. * January 1992 got 20-year deal contract with sithe $3.5 billion. The advantage was that knowing price of gas for early part of any project eliminated a major uncertainty and made easier to raise finance. * In 1994, Enron was operating power and pipeline project in 15 countries * To get round the problem of large number of small producers who lack of capital, Enron provided liquidity by prepaying long term fixed price gas supplies with the payment secured on the gas itself. They pay Enron in gas rather than cash. * After obtaining exemption, Enron began buying and selling electricity. The company was free to choose which part to operate not necessary be generator or transporter. One could source electricity from generators and rent transmission capacity. * Rebecca mark favored investment in traditional...
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