enron the smartest guys in the room analysis

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1992. Two years later, Skilling had created a new accounting technique called mark-to-market (MTM) accounting, which was granted formal approval by the U.S. (Jeff) Skilling, a partner at consulting firm McKinsey, which at the time was advising Enron. Jeffrey Keith Skilling was CEO of Enron Corporation at the time of the Enron scandal.Įnron was born in 1985 as a result of the merger between Houston Natural Gas Company and InterNorth Inc., with the chief executive officer (CEO) of Houston, Kenneth Lay, taking the reins of the newly formed entity.

The shockwaves the scandal sent across capital markets were seismic, shaking investor confidence to its core and changing the corporate and regulatory landscapes forever. It was also once the world’s largest energy-trading company, with a market value of up to $68 billion, before its collapse destroyed thousands of jobs and more than $2 billion in pension plans. Indeed, when Enron filed for bankruptcy protection on December 2, 2001, it was the largest company to do so in US history until that point in time. One of the largest companies in the United States collapsed virtually overnight, with the fallout of its malfeasance being billions of dollars stolen, thousands of jobs wiped out, dozens of criminal convictions and even one incident of suicide. scandal of 2001 remains perhaps the most impactful of all time. It may not have been the biggest in dollar terms, or even the most severe in terms of criminality and personnel held culpable, but the Enron Corp.

August 2021 marked the 20 th anniversary of arguably the most notorious corporate-accounting scandal of all time. Both of these buildings in downtown Houston, 1400 Smith Street and 1500 Louisiana Street, were formerly occupied by Enron.

Enron the smartest guys in the room analysis