Running Head: ENRON SCANDAL Examining a Business Failure: Enron Scandal Christy Devore University of Phoenix Examining a Business Failure: Enron Scandal Enron started as a Natural Gas Pipeline Company in 1985 as Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth merged (Thomas, 2002). It became a real trading powerhouse as it started trading energies and launched into new markets. At the end of 2001 it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained substantially. Enron had indulged in a financial scandal, involving itself and its accounting firm. The irregular accounting practices, including manipulating stock prices, caused Enron to have to file bankruptcy in December of 2001 (Thomas, 2002).
The lending companies took advantage of this when the market was good; however, they were surprised by the downfall of the housing industry and the economy. 2. Discuss the ethical issues that caused the downfall of Countrywide Financial. One ethical issue that caused the downfall of Countrywide Financial is that leadership was more focused on themselves then on the company. So that the company could grow at a rapid rate, their salespeople were being given incentives to undertake riskier transactions.
ACRC: CORPRORATE GOVERNANCE FAILURE AT SATYAM 1. What are the reasons for the inadequate corporate governance at Satyam? The fall of Satyam can be attributed to many causes as mentioned below: * Raju had been manipulating Satyam’s financial books for a period of seven years and the major corporate governance issue was that the Board of Directors and the auditors were unable to catch hold of the issue for so long. * Raju and his family founded a group of companies called Maytas. It was owned by his sons and to ensure billion dollar targets for Maytas, Raju inflated cash and bank balances in Satyam’s financial records.
The stress that can compel a company to doctor their financial data can override the compromise of ethics within an organization. A look back at the catastrophic financial mistakes of health care organizations in the past illustrates the devastation unethical accounting can cause. HealthSouth provides an excellent glimpse into the horrible consequences when it all comes crashing down. According to Bouchard (2012), "Committing fraud, said the former CFO, had consequences he couldn’t and didn’t foresee. It nearly destroyed him emotionally, which is why he retired to everyone’s surprise in 1997 at the age of 54, just a year after the fraud began.
Arthur Anderson agreed with Enron to make it look as if Enron had more revenue than it actually did, so that stockholders would value the stock more. Because Arthur Anderson committed such a blatant act of mistrust, even if its companies were open, people would not trust them doing the auditing. c. Because the consulting firm was shut down, the $27 million earned in consulting fees from Enron was most likely money the firms were trying to hide. This action is unethical by both Enron and Arthur Anderson. d. The sale of the consulting practice by Arthur Anderson did not allow the company to avoid conflicts of interest because they still were working both internal and external audits, so the external audits were checking the work of the internal audits.
Brief overview of WorldCom’s case and general discussion of its fraud nature: Beresford, Katzenbach and Jr (2003) stated that, from 1999 until 2002, a few executives at WorldCom perpetrated accounting fraud that led to the largest bankruptcy in history. The principle business strategy of its CEO – aggressive growth through acquisitions underlined its collapse and eventually imposed pressure to management to commit fraud. In fact, WorldCom’s fraud was a consequence of a set of complex factors, including the existence of dominant senior management, structurally weak internal controls, inadequate audits by Arthur Andersen, the poor oversight of the Board, and pressure from Wall Street’s expectation, etc. The large scale collapses of WorldCom and Enron triggered immediate remedies of corporate governance, essentially the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which aimed to solve the issue of “lack of confidence” in the reported financials. WorldCom’s fraud was an intentional misconduct of the perpetrated senior management that results in an $11 billion material misstatement in the financial statements via two principle forms: reduction of the reported line costs and exaggeration of reported revenues, in order to create an image of increased earnings and revenue and hold the line costs lower than the industry average rather than indicate the truth and fairness of WorldCom’s wealth and progress (Beresford et al, 2003).
Also, the movie focuses on the ethical dilemma, whether the company should (or not) sacrifice long-term goals for short-term profits. According to the GTX’ executives, sharply cutting expenditures - by downsizing and redundancies - was necessary in order to push up the stock price and avoid upcoming aggressive acquisition by the competitors. But the question is how in real life investors perceive large layoffs? According to Gunther Capelle-Blancard and Delia Tatu – there is no distinct correlation and investors are likely to do the opposite of the board’s expectations: “Layoff decision can be associated with both positive and negative stock market reaction. The perception of investors is determined by the information incorporated in the announcement itself and in firm specific characteristic, but also by economic conjuncture” The next reason of the board’s decisions lays in the fact that the GTX was prioritizing the relationships with stockholders, neglecting the other stakeholders at the same time.
However, the traders were fired once it was revealed that Enron's reserves were gambled away which nearly destroyed the company. After these facts were brought to light, Ken Lay denies having any knowledge of wrongdoing. Needless to say, when required to testify before the U.S. Congress on the reasons for Enron’s collapse, Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow, sought refuge under the Fifth Amendment. Andrew Fastow, Jeffrey Skilling, and Kenneth Lay are among the most notable top-level executives implicated in the collapse of Enron’s. Kenneth Lay, the former chairman of Enron was prosecuted on 11 criminal counts of making misleading statements and fraud.
The biggest victim of the Lehman Brothers’ downfall was its investors. In weeks leadings up to the downfall, investors, unaware of the storm brewing within, were still being sold its financial products.4 This caused a loss of significant wealth for many when the company collapsed. A great amount of public trust was also lost. As Lehman Brothers is one the biggest financial institute in the world, its collapses caused ripples in the financial world, eventually contributing to the financial crisis. What Could Have Been Done Differently The ego of the top management doomed the company.
The Collapse of Enron Barbara Bonnema Post University The Collapse of Enron What led to the eventual collapse of Enron under Lay and Skilling? How did the top leadership at Enron undermine the foundation values of the Enron Code of Ethics? How did Enron’s corporate culture promote unethical decisions and actions? These questions are answered and explained with examples as follows: 1)There are several reasons that eventually led to Enron’s collapse: a) A corrupt leadership at the top. Numerous Enron executives were charged with criminal acts, including fraud, money laundering and insider trading.