Enron Essay -- essays research papers

In 1984 Ken Lay became chairman and Chief Operator of Houston Natural Gas. It quickly doubled when it bought Florida Pipeline Company. The next year in 1985 Houston Natural Gas merged Internorth Incorporation. With the merger they both combined to own around 40,000 miles of pipeline and shortly after they changed their name to Enron. Around that time Washington was being lobbied by energy corporations to deregulate business and let companies set their own prices. Energy companies said this would not only lead to the end of monopolies but the extra competition would benefit companies and consumers. Over the next several years Washington began to lift controls on who could produce energy and how it was sold. With an influx of new suppliers energy prices were very unstable. With these deregulations Enron was allowed to sell natural gas on an open market such as oranges and wheat. With this new way of business Enron was able to grow into the seventh largest company in the United States with over 25,000 employees in over thirty countries. It became an innovator in gas trading and technological advances in the energy field. In 1990 Enron hired Jeffery Skilling as the company Energy’s Trading Operation Consultant. At age thirty-six Skilling was able to create the â€Å"Gas Bank†. The â€Å"Gas Bank â€Å"is when a company buys large volumes of gas from producers and resells it to industrial customers at long term contracts. This helped stabilize the gas market which was very volatile at the time. It also helped expand gas production nationwide and helped Enron grow to a major player in the energy industry.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   As Skilling went up in rank he started to get the company involved in risky investments to make more profit. In an interview with the University of Virginia he said â€Å"We like risk because you make money by taking risk,† This was one of the many reasons which got Enron into financial debt, Skilling also persuaded regulators to allow Enron to use â€Å"market-to-market† accounting. A technique used by brokerage companies for securities trading. It allowed Enron to count long-term contracts as immediate profit although most of the money wouldn’t be coming in for several years. For example if a pipeline in Europe was projected to produce $89 million of profit it would be posted, but there was one problem the pipeline hadn’t been built yet. With the high t... ...ion in profit when they only produced $880 million. They were in true debt for more than $628 million by the end 2000. More than $630 million came from improper accounting and another $296 million in profit came from hidden tax cutting transactions. This sent the stock plummeting from $70 to 60 cents and produced losses of more than $60 billion on paper. With this fall in stock price, Enron filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. Since the fall of Enron and other major corporations, Senate and Congress are now trying to configure a major reform bill which would protect workers and their pensions. President Bush also signed off on a new accounting-reform legislature which creates an oversight board that would investigate and punish accounting violations. Now the last step by the government is putting everyone involved behind bars. Skilling is set to testify before a house committee and has chosen not to invoke the Fifth Amendment as many of the other board members have chosen to do. Fastow has to also testify before congress but will plead the fifth to avoid self incrimination. Kropper, Enron’s director of global market pleaded guilty last weak to the demise of the company.