Enron History Essay

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Enron History Enron was founded in 1985 by Kenneth Lay. Mr. Lay merged two companies, Houston Natural Gas and Omaha, Nebraska’s InterNorth, which sold and transported natural gas. Enron headquarters was located at 1400 Smith Street in downtown Houston, Texas. After the merger, Enron was applauded for being innovative in opening new markets. To create new markets, Enron acted as a bank for commodities, buying a commodity from suppliers and selling it to buyers. It would contract to sell natural gas for future delivery at a fixed price. Then if it wanted to hedge the transaction, it would contract again to buy natural gas at the same future date. These types of future contracts are among those called derivatives. To deal with the buyers and sellers who were central to a “trading partners” strategy, sound credit and liquidity were essential. Enron had to deliver cash when buy transactions were settled financially. Therefore, it became important for Enron to generate cash flow and report cash flow internally. Throughout its existence, Enron relied on borrowed cash for its day-to-day operations. Several years after merging Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth Jeffrey Skilling was hired developed a staff of executives that, by the use of accounting loopholes, special purpose entities, and poor financial reporting, were able to hide billions of dollars in debt from failed deals and projects. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and other executives not only misled Enron's board of directors and audit committee on high-risk accounting practices, but also pressured Andersen to ignore the issues. Enron's stock increased from the start of the 1990s until year-end 1998 by 311% percent, only modestly higher than the average rate of growth in the Standard & Poor 500 index. However, the stock increased by 56% in 1999 and a further 87% in 2000, compared to a 20% increase and a

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