Enron
Enron Creditors Recovery Corporation, formerly Enron Corporation, is a defunct U.S. energy company based in Houston, Texas. Enron filed for bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of New York in late 2001 and selected Weil, Gotshal & Manges as their bankruptcy counsel. Enron employed around 21,000 people (McLean & Elkind, 2003) and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, pulp and paper, and communications companies, with claimed revenues of $111 billion in 2000. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years. It achieved infamy at the end of 2001, when it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained mostly by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud. Enron has since become a popular symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption. The lawsuit against Enron's directors, following the scandal, was notable in that the directors settled the suit by paying very significant amounts of money personally. In addition, the scandal caused the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, which had effects on the wider business world, as described in more detail below. As of March 1, 2007, Enron Corp. has legally changed its name to Enron Creditors Recovery Corp. Enron Creditors Recovery Corp. will continue to operate under the name Enron Corp. by filing a Doing Business As, or "dba," Certificate with Harris County, TX. In addition, effective March 1, 2007, the address of Enron Creditors Recovery Corp. has changed to 1331 Lamar, Suite 1600, Houston, TX 77010-3025. The P.O. Box address for Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., remains the same, P.O. Box 1188, Houston, TX 77251-1188. Early history Enron has its roots in Omaha, Nebraska, with Northern Natural Gas Company, formed in 1931 and reorganized under a holding company in 1979, InterNorth, which purchased the smaller Houston Natural Gas in 1985, changing its name to Enron in the process. After building a large, new corporate headquarters in Omaha, the new Enron named former Houston Natural Gas CEO Kenneth Lay as CEO of the newly merged company. Lay purchased a condominium home on the top floor of a historic downtown Omaha building, but soon engineered a "management coup", in which he moved Enron's headquarters to Houston. The merged company initially styled itself "HNG/InterNorth Inc.", but the departure of ex InterNorth CEO Samuel Segnar six months after the merger provided Ken Lay with the opportunity to thoroughly re-brand the business. Lay originally favored the name "Enteron" (possibly spelled in camelcase as "EnterOn"); but when it was pointed out that the term approximated a Greek word referring to the intestine, it was quickly shortened to "Enron." The final name was decided upon only after business cards, stationary, and other items had been printed reading Enteron, reflecting the confused state of affairs in the company at the time. Enron's famous "tilted E" logo was designed by the late American graphic designer Paul Rand. Enron was originally involved in the transmission and distribution of electricity and gas throughout the United States and the development, construction, and operation of power plants, pipelines, and other infrastructure worldwide. In 1998, Enron moved into the water sector, creating the Azurix Corporation, which it part-floated on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in June 1999. Azurix failed to break into the water utility market, and one of its major concessions, in Buenos Aires, was a large-scale money-loser. In April 2001, Enron announced its intention to break up Azurix and sell its assets. Enron grew wealthy, it claimed, through its pioneering, marketing and promotion of power and communications bandwidth commodities and related derivatives as tradable financial instruments, including exotic items such as weather derivatives. Enron was named "America's Most Innovative Company" by Fortune magazine for six consecutive years, from 1996 to 2001. It was on the Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work for in America" list in 2000, and had offices that were, in hindsight, stunning in their opulence. Enron was hailed by many, including labor and the workforce, as an overall great company, praised for its large long-term pensions, benefits for its workers and extremely effective management until its exposure in corporate fraud. As was later discovered, many of Enron's recorded assets and profits were inflated, or even wholly fraudulent and nonexistent, by putting debts and losses into entities formed "offshore" that were not consolidated with (included in) the company's financial statements and, in addition, by the use of other sophisticated and arcane financial transactions between Enron and related companies formed to take unprofitable entities off the company's books Its most valuable asset, the 1930s-era Northern Natural Gas, was eventually purchased back by a group of Omaha investors, who moved its headquarters back to Omaha, and is now a unit of Warren Buffett's Mid-American Energy Holdings Corp. Products Enron traded in more than 30 different products including the following. * Oil & LNG Transportation * Broadband * Petrochemicals* * Plastics* * Power* * Principal Investments * Pulp & Paper* * Risk Management for Commodities * Shipping / Freight * Steel* * Streaming Media * Water & Wastewater * Computer Chips * Weather Risk Management* (Items with a (* ) were traded on EnronOnline) It was also an extensive futures trader, including sugar, coffee, grains, hog, and other meat futures. At the time of its bankruptcy filing in December, 2001, Enron was structured into seven distinct business units. Online Marketplace Services * EnronOnline (commodity trading platform) * ClickPaper (transaction platform for pulp, paper, and wood products) * EnronCredit (credit risk solutions) * ePowerOnline (customer interface for Enron Broadband Services) * Enron Direct (sales of fixed-price contracts for gas and electricity- Europe only) * EnergyDesk (energy-related derivatives trading- Europe only) * NewPowerCompany (online energy trading, joint venture with IBM and AOL) * Enron Weather (weather derivatives) * DealBench (online business services) * Water2Water (water storage, supply, and quality credits trading) * HotTap (customer interface for Enron's U.S. gas pipeline businesses) * EnronStrommarkt (business to business pricing and information platform- Germany only) Broadband Services * Enron Intelligent Network (broadband content delivery) * Enron Media Services (risk management services for media content companies) * Customizable Bandwidth Solutions (bandwidth and fiber products trading) * Streaming Media Applications (live or on-demand Internet broadcasting applications) Energy and Commodities Services * Enron Power (electricity wholesaling) * Enron Natural Gas (natural gas wholesaling) * Enron Pulp and Paper, Packaging, and Lumber (risk management derivatives for forest products industry) * Enron Coal and Emissions (coal wholesaling and CO2 offsets trading) * Enron Plastics and Petrochemicals (price risk management for polymers, olefins, methanol, aeromatics, and natural gas liquids) * Enron Weather Risk Management (weather derivatives) * Enron Steel (financial swap contracts and spot pricing for the steel industry) * Enron Crude Oil and Oil Products (petroleum hedging) * Enron Wind Power Services (wind turbine manufacturing and wind farm operation) * MG Plc. (U.K. metals merchant) Capital and Risk Management Services Commercial and Industrial Outsourcing Services * Commodity Management * Energy Asset Management * Energy Information Management * Facility Management * Capital Management * Azurix Inc. (water utilities and infrastructure) Project Development and Management Services * Energy Infrastructure Development (developing, financing, and operation of power plants and related projects) * Enron Global Exploration & Production Inc. (oil and natural gas field services) * Elektro Eletricidade e Servicos SA (Brazilian electric utility) Energy Transportation and Upstream Services * Natural Gas Transportation * Northern Border Pipeline * Houston Pipeline * Transwestern Pipeline * Florida Gas Transmission * Northern Natural Gas Company * Natural Gas Storage * Compression Services * Gas Processing and Treatment * Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Services * EOTT Energy Inc. (oil transportation) Enron manufactured gas valves, circuit breakers, thermostats, and electrical equipment in Venezuela through INSELA SA, a 50-50 joint venture with General Electric. Enron owned three paper and pulp products companies: Garden State Paper, a newsprint mill; as well as Papiers Stadacona and St. Aurelie Timberlands. Enron held a controlling stake in the Louisiana-based petroleum exploration and production company Mariner Energy. EnronOnline Mergefrom.gif It has been suggested that EnronOnline be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Main article: EnronOnline In November 1999, Enron launched EnronOnline. EnronOnline was the first web-based transaction system that allowed buyers and sellers to buy, sell, and trade commodity products globally. It allowed users to do business only with Enron. Due to the giant cash needs of Enron Online and the company wasting money in other areas such as broadband, Azurix, Enron Energy Services, and shutting down the original pipeline service which generated cash flow, Enron virtually drained itself of cash. The Enron Global Finance department had to keep working up more creative financing moves to keep the company running. Principal Assets At the time of bankrupy, Enron owned all or interests in the following major assets: Power Plants: Enron owned or operated 38 electric power plants worldwide * Teeside (United Kingdom) - at the time of commission in 1992, at 1750 MW, was the largest Natural Gas Co-Gen plant in the world. It's on-time and under-budget completion put Enron Power on the map as an international developer, owner and operator. * Bahia Las Minas (Panama)- largest thermal power plant in Central America, 355 MW * Puerto Quetzal Power Project (Guatemala) - 110 MW * PQP LLC (Guatemala) - holding company for 124 MW Power Barge named "Esperanza" * Empresa Energetica Corinto (Nicaragua) - holding company for "Margarita II" 70.5 MW power barge, Enron held 35% share * EcoElectrica (Puerto Rico, USA) - 507 MW natural gas cogeneration plant, with adjacent LNG import terminal- supplied 20% of island's electricity * Puerto Plata Power Project (Dominican Republic) - 185 MW power barge named "Puerto Plata" * Modesto Maranzana Power Plant (Argentina) - 70 MW * Cuiaba Integrated Project (Brazil) - 480 MW combined cycle power plant * Nowa Sarznya Power Plant (Poland) - 116 MW, first privately developed post-Communist electricity project in Poland * Sarlux Power Project (Italy) - 551 MW combined cycle power plant, converted residue from Italy's largest oil refinery into synthetic gas for fuel * Trakya Power Project (Turkey) - 478 MW * Chengdu Cogen Project (China) - 284 MW, joint venture with Sichuan Electric Company * Northern Marianas Power Project (Guam, USA) - 80 MW slow speed diesel oil plant * Batangas Power Project (Philippines) - 110 MW * Subic Bay Power Project (Philippines) - 116 MW * Dabhol Power Project (India) - 2,184 MW combined cycle plant, generally considered one of Enron's most controversial and least successful projects * Storm Lake Wind Generation Project (Iowa, USA) - 193 MW wind farm * Lake Benton II Wind Generation Facility (Minnesota, USA) - 104 MW wind farm * Lake Benton I Wind Generation Facility (Minnesota, USA) - 107 MW wind farm * Cabazon Wind Generation Facility (California, USA) - 40 MW wind farm * Green Power I Wind Generation Facility (California, USA) - 16.5 MW wind farm * Indian Mesa I Wind Generation Facility (Texas, USA) - 25.5 MW wind farm * Clear Sky Wind Power Generation Facility (Texas, USA) - 135 MW wind farm * Mill Run Wind Wind Power Generation Facility (Pennsylvania, USA) - 15 MW wind farm * Trent Mesa Wind Generation Facility (Texas, USA) - 150 MW wind farm * Montfort Wind Generation Facility (Wisconsin, USA) - 30 MW wind farm * 8 hydroelectric plants in Oregon with a combined capacity of 509,000 kW, owned through Portland General Electric * 4 additional thermal plants in Oregon and Montana with a combined capacity of 1,464,000 kW, owned through Portland General Electric Pipelines * Centragas (Colombia) - 357 miles, natural gas * Promigas (Colombia) * Transportadora de Gas del Sur (Argentina) - largest pipeline system in South America, 5,005 km * CEG (Brazil) - 1,368 miles, natural gas * CEGRio (Brazil) * Transredes (Bolivia) - 3,000 km natural gas pipeline and 2,500 km oil & liquids pipeline * Bolivia-to-Brazil Pipeline (Bolivia/Brazil) - 3,000 km, natural gas * Northern Natural Gas (Upper Midwestern USA) - 16,500 miles, included share in Trailblazer Pipeline * Transwestern Pipeline (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado) - 2,554 miles * Florida Gas Transmission (Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida) - 4,800 miles * Northern Border Pipeline (Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana ) - 1,249 miles Electric Utilities/Distributors * Portland General Electric Company (USA) - serving 775,000 customers in Oregon * Elektro Electricidade e Servicos S.A. (Brazil) - 1.5 million customers * Compania Anonima Luz y Fuerza Electricas de Puerto Cabello (Venezuela) - 50,000 customers Natural Gas-Related Businesses * ProCaribe (Puerto Rico, USA) - LPG storage terminal, only fully refrigerated LPG storage facility in Caribbean * San Juan Gas Company (Puerto Rico, USA) - gas distribution, 400 industrial/commercial customers * Industrial Gases Ltd. (Jamaica) - 8 filling plants, industrial gas manufacturing & LPG distribution, held 100% monopoly on Jamaican industrial gas business and 40% of LPG business * Gaspart (Brazil) - consortium of 7 gas distribution companies * Vengas (Venezuela) - LPG transportation and distribution * SK-Enron Company Ltd. (South Korea) - joint venture with SK Corporation; included 8 city gas utilities, an LPG distributor, and a steam and electricity cogeneration facility Pulp & Paper * Garden State Paper Company Inc. (New Jersey, USA) - paperboard and newsprint recycling mill * Papiers Stadacona Ltee. (Quebec, Canada) - wood pulp & paper mill * St. Aurelie Timberlands Company Ltd. (Quebec, and New Brunswick, Canada & Maine, USA) - timber company Other * Mariner Energy Inc. (Houston, Texas, USA) - oil & gas exploration, development, and production with operations in the Gulf of Mexico * Interruptores Especializados Lara (Venezuela) - manufacturer of valves, thermostats, and electrical breakers for appliances * Enron Wind - manufacturer of wind power turbines and related systems, with factories in USA, Spain, and Germany Scandals Enron's global reputation was undermined by persistent rumours of bribery and political pressure to secure contracts in Central America, South America, Africa, and the Philippines. Especially controversial was its $3 billion contract with the Maharashtra State Electricity Board in India, where it is alleged that Enron officials used political connections within the Clinton and Bush administrations to exert pressure on the board. After a series of scandals involving irregular accounting procedures bordering on fraud, perpetrated throughout the 1990s, involving Enron and its accounting firm Arthur Andersen, it stood at the verge of undergoing the largest bankruptcy in history by mid-November 2001. A white knight rescue attempt by a similar, smaller energy company, Dynegy, was not viable. Enron filed for Bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. As the scandal was revealed in 2001, Enron shares dropped from over US$90.00 to US$0.30. As Enron had been considered a blue chip stock, this was an unprecedented and disastrous event in the financial world. Enron's plunge occurred after it was revealed that much of its profits and revenue were the result of deals with special purpose entities (limited partnerships which it controlled). The result was that many of Enron's debts and the losses that it suffered were not reported in its financial statements. In addition, the scandal caused the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, leaving only four big international accounting firms, which is still causing difficulty for large corporations that need to use more than one accounting firm for auditing and non-auditing services. On January 9 2002, the United States Department of Justice announced it was going to pursue a criminal investigation of Enron, and Congressional hearings began on January 24, 2002. Insider trading Enron had created offshore entities, units which can be used for planning and avoidance of taxes, increasing the profitability of a business. This provided ownership and management with full freedom of currency movement, and full anonymity, which would hide losses that the company was taking. These entities made Enron look more profitable than it actually was, and created a dangerous spiral in which each quarter, corporate officers would have to perform more and more contorted financial deception to create the illusion of billions in profits while the company was actually losing money. This practice drove up their stock price to new levels, at which point the executives began to work on insider information and trade millions of dollars worth of Enron stock. The executives and insiders at Enron knew about the offshore accounts that were hiding losses for the company; however the investors knew nothing of this. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow led the team which created the off-books companies, and manipulated the deals to provide himself, his family, and his friends with hundreds of millions of dollars in guaranteed revenue, at the expense of the corporation he worked for and its stockholders. In August of 2000, Enron's stock price hit its highest value of $90. At this point Enron executives, who possessed the inside information on the hidden losses, began to sell their stock. At the same time, the general public and Enron's investors were told to buy the stock. Executives told the investors that the stock would continue to climb until it reached possibly the $130 to $140 range, while secretly unloading their shares. As executives sold their shares, the price began to drop. Investors were told to continue buying stock or hold steady if they already owned Enron because the stock price would rebound in the near future. Kenneth Lay's strategy for responding to Enron's continuing problems was in his demeanor. As he did many times, Lay would issue a statement or make an appearance to calm investors and assure them that Enron was headed in the right direction. By August 15, 2001, Enron's stock price had fallen to $42. Many of the investors still trusted Lay and believed that Enron would rule the market. They continued to buy or hold their stock and lost more money every day. As October closed, the stock had fallen to $15. Many saw this as a great opportunity to buy Enron stock because of what Kenneth Lay had been telling them in the media. Their trust and optimism proved greatly misplaced. Enron's European operations filed for bankruptcy on November 30 2001, and it sought Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. two days later on December 2. At the time, it was the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, and it cost 4,000 employees their jobs.[1][2] Lay has been accused of selling over $70 million worth of stock at this time, which he used to repay cash advances on lines of credit. He sold another $20 million worth of stock in the open market. Also, Lay's wife, Linda, has been accused of selling 500,000 shares of Enron stock totalling $1.2 million on November 28, 2001. The money earned from this sale did not go to the family but rather to charitable organizations, which had already received pledges of contributions from the foundation. Records show that Mrs. Lay placed the sale order sometime between 10:00 and 10:20 AM. News of Enron's problems, including the millions of dollars in losses they had been hiding went public about 10:30 that morning, and the stock price soon fell to below one dollar. Former Enron executive Paula Rieker has been charged with criminal insider trading. Rieker obtained 18,380 Enron shares for $15.51 a share. She sold that stock for $49.77 a share in July 2001, a week before the public was told what she already knew about the $102 million loss. Aftermath Kenneth Lay, the former Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer and Jeffrey Skilling, former Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer, went on trial for their part in the Enron scandal in January 2006. The 53-count, 65-page indictment covers a broad range of financial crimes, including bank fraud, making false statements to banks and auditors, securities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and insider trading. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake has previously denied motions by the defendants to hold separate trials and to move the case out of Houston, where the defendants argued the negative publicity surrounding Enron's demise would make it impossible to get a fair trial. Mr. Lay pleaded not guilty to the eleven criminal charges. Lay stated that he was misled by those around him. At the time of his death the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had been seeking more than $90 million from Lay in addition to civil fines. The case surrounding Mrs. Linda Lay is a difficult one. Mrs. Lay sold roughly 500,000 shares of Enron ten minutes to thirty minutes before the information that Enron was collapsing went public on November 28 2001. This was information that Enron executives had known for over a year. Former managing director of investor relations for Enron Paula Rieker pleaded guilty in federal court to a criminal insider trading charge. The one felony charge against Rieker carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison and a $1 million fine. Rieker agreed never again to serve as an officer or director of a public company. If a federal court approves the settlement, Rieker will pay the SEC $499,333, the profit from the sale of 18,380 shares of Enron stock. Rieker has been a valuable witness for the government as she prepared earnings releases and conference calls with Enron analysts. On December 28 2005, former CAO Richard Causey pleaded guilty to securities fraud. He will have to serve 7 years in prison and pay $1.25 million to the U.S. Government. Causey has the possibility of only serving 5 years in prison if he cooperates and testifies with Lay and Skilling. On January 13 2006 lobbyist William "Art" Roberts pleaded guilty to impersonating Senate staff members during the investigation. Roberts was hired by a German bank in June 2004 to get a letter from a Senate subcommittee stating the bank had done their due diligence investigating the Enron collapse, as part of the bank's defense in a suit filed against it by a London bank. [1] Lay and Skilling were indicted for securities and wire fraud in July 2004, leading to a highly-publicized trial in which Lay was convicted on all six counts and Skilling on 19 of 28 counts on May 25 2006. On July 5 2006, Lay died at age 64 while vacationing in Aspen, Colorado, after suffering a heart attack on July 4. Skilling was convicted and sentenced to 24 years, 4 months in a federal prison on October 23, 2006. As well as his sentence of 24 years, 4 months, he was ordered to restore the Enron pension fund with $26 million out-of-pocket. It is expected that he will appeal, as many major business officials do after conviction and sentencing. Enron's bankruptcy took the form of a liquidation, rather than a restructuring, as initially expected, and even announced on the company's website. Assets considered "non-core", such as Enron's energy and bandwidth trading businesses, the Enron Wind wind energy unt ,and the IT consulting businesses, were divested. . Also including in the divestiture process were oil field services company Mariner Energy (in which Enron held a 98% controlling interest) and INSELA, a Venezuelan gas valve and electrical equipment manufacturer in which Enron held 50%. Also sold outright were Enron's paper and forest products companies in the U.S. and Canada, consisting of Garden State Paper Company, Papiers Stadacona, and St. Aurelie Timberlands. Enron's sole electric utility in the United States, Portland General Electric, was spun off as an independent company in 2006, with its shares disbursed to creditors. The remainder of Enron's operations were reorganized under two major subsidiaries formed in 2003- CrossCountry Energy, consisting of Enron's domestic gas pipeline interests; and Prisma Energy International, formed from most of Enron's global electricity generation and distribution businesses, formerly referred to as "Enron International". CrossCountry Energy was sold to CCE Holdings, a joint venture of Southern Union and a unit of General Electric, in 2004. The spin-off of Portland General Electric in 2005 left Prisma Energy as Enron's last major business asset. Prisma Energy itself was ultimately sold to Ashmore Energy International in 2006, leaving Enron Corp. as a non-trading "shell" company, now in the final stage of its bankruptcy liquidation. Between the initial proposal of the reorganization plan in 2002, and the formal creation of Prisma Energy International and CrossCountry Energy in 2003, the two proposed companies were referred to within Enron as "InternationalCo" and "PipeCo" respectively. To reflect its new status as a largely asset-less shell existing solely to manage final payouts to creditors, Enron changed its legal, corporate name to "Enron Creditors Recovery Corporation", d/b/a Enron Corporation, in early 2007. Perhaps one of Enron's few remaining assets is DealBench, an online transaction and divestiture service, once part of the now defunct EnronOnline. Class action lawsuit On April 8, 2002, Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, LLP attorneys led by William Lerach filed a consolidated class action lawsuit against Enron Corp. in the U.S. District Court in Houston. On behalf of its clients, Lerach Coughlin seeks relief for purchasers of Enron publicly traded equity and debt securities between October 19, 1998 and November 27, 2001. Lerach Coughlin attorneys moved swiftly to freeze over $1.1 billion in illicit insider trading proceeds. Lerach Coughlin attorneys and investigators interviewed more than 100 witnesses concerning the numerous organizations within Enron, including over 3,000 related entities and partnerships. Lerach Coughlin attorneys sought expedited discovery from both Enron and Enron's auditor, Andersen. Just 24 hours after Andersen revealed it destroyed an untold number of relevant documents concerning the Enron fraud, the attorneys went back to court seeking to preserve all evidence. Lerach Coughlin attorneys' factual investigation also uncovered Enron's extensive document destruction at its Houston headquarters. The U.S. District Court in Houston has denied a number of motions to dismiss the litigation. The parties are currently engaged in discovery and motion practice; depositions began in the summer of 2004. Lead Plaintiff, The U.C. Regents, has reached settlements with Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, the Outside Directors, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and CIBC totaling over $7 billion for investors. Those settlements are subject to approval by the Court. California's Deregulation Congressman Phil Gramm, Enron's second largest recipient of campaign contributions, succeeded in legislating California's energy commodity trading deregulation. Despite warnings from prominent consumer groups which stated that this law would give energy traders too much influence over energy commodity prices, the legislation passed in December 2000. As Public Citizen reported, "Because of Enron's new, unregulated power auction, the company's 'Wholesale Services' revenues quadrupled -- from $12 billion in the first quarter of 2000 to $48.4 billion in the first quarter of 2001." [2] Prior to the passage of the deregulation law, there had been only one Stage 3 rolling blackout. Following the passage, California experienced a total of 38 blackouts defined as Stage 3 rolling blackouts until federal regulators intervened in June 2001. These blackouts occurred largely as a result of the manipulation by traders and marketers. By withholding energy and shutting down generators, frenzy appeared in the market and energy prices climbed higher on the west coast. However, the New York Mercantile Exchange had sent the California Public Utilities Commission a memorandum predicting that the new rules would result in less competition, less product and service information, higher prices, lower consumer value, and higher costs. For this reason and the fact that the company went bankrupt in less than a year after the supposed price gouging, the thesis of Enron's relevance in California's energy crisis is still debatable. Enron was accepting IOUs from the state and the power companies rather than demanding cash upon delivery. Records from the governor Gray Davis' office reveal that during the crisis, Enron was charging less for electricity than the publicly owned utilities' average ($344 for a megawatt) and significantly less than Davis's own L.A. Department of Water & Power ($292 per megawatt), under the direction of David Freeman. According to the industry consultant Charles Cicchetti, former chairman of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission: "Two things should be obvious. First, none of this should be called deregulation. Second, it is difficult to see how any of these myriad regulatory schemes, unless altered significantly but perhaps not fundamentally, will lower prices." Fallout The long-term trials and implications of Enron's collapse are somewhat unclear, but there is considerable political fallout both in the U.S. and in the UK relating to the money Enron gave to political figures (around US$7 million since 1990). During Clinton's eight years in office, the company and Lay contributed about $900,000 to the Democratic Party. In 1999 and 2000, the company gave $362,000 in soft-money donations to Democrats. Since 1996, between 72% and 94% of yearly American contributions went to the Republican Party, including heavy contributions to George W. Bush's presidential campaign. Fallout from the scandal quickly extended beyond Enron and all those formerly associated with it. The trial of Arthur Andersen LLP on charges of obstruction of justice related to Enron helped to expose accounting fraud at WorldCom. The subsequent bankruptcy of that telecommunications firm quickly set off a wave of other accounting scandals. This wave engulfed many companies, exposing high-level corruption, accounting errors, and insider trading. Though at the time of its collapse, Enron was the largest bankruptcy in history, this has been eclipsed by the collapse of WorldCom. Former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, the mastermind behind Enron's complex network of offshore partnerships and questionable accounting practices, was indicted on November 1 2002, by a federal grand jury in Houston on 78 counts including fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy. He and his wife Lea Fastow, former assistant treasurer, accepted a plea agreement on January 14 2004. Andrew Fastow will serve a ten-year prison sentence and forfeit US $23.8 million, while Lea Fastow will serve a five-month prison sentence and a year of supervised release, including five months of house arrest; in return, both will provide testimony against other Enron corporate officers. Ben Glisan Jr., a former Enron treasurer, was the first man to be sent to prison in the Enron scandal. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit security and wire fraud. John Forney, a former energy trader who invented various strategies such as the "Death Star," was indicted in December 2002, on 11 counts of conspiracy and wire fraud. His trial was scheduled for October 12 2004. His supervisors, Timothy Belden and Jeffrey Richter, have both pled guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud and currently are aiding prosecutors in investigating this scandal. Jeffrey Skilling was arrested on February 11 2004, by the FBI. Kenneth Lay was indicted by a federal grand jury on July 7 2004 for his involvement in the scandal. He pleaded not guilty on July 9. On May 25 2006, the jury in the Lay and Skilling trial returned its verdicts. Skilling was convicted of 19 of 28 counts of securities fraud and wire fraud and acquitted on the remaining nine, including charges of insider trading. He was sentenced to 24 years, 4 months in prison. Lay was convicted of all six counts of securities and wire fraud for which he had been tried, and he faced a total sentence of up to 45 years in prison.[3] Lay died on July 5 2006, before sentencing was scheduled. On July 12 2006, a potential Enron witness scheduled to be extradicted to the US, Neil Coulbeck, was found dead in a park in north-east London.[4] The US case alleges that Coulbeck and others conspired with former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow.[5] All told, sixteen people pleaded guilty for crimes committed at the company, and five others, including four former Merrill Lynch employees, were found guilty at trial. Eight former Enron executives testified, the star witness being Fastow, against Lay and Skilling, his former bosses. [6] Pensions Thousands of Enron employees and investors lost all their savings, children's college funds, and pensions when Enron collapsed. A lawsuit on the behalf of a group of Enron's shareholders has been filed against Enron executives and directors. This lawsuit accuses twenty-nine of these executives and directors of insider trading and misleading the public. Because the 401(k) plan is a defined contribution plan, there was no PBGC insurance and employees lost the money they invested in Enron stock. They could only sue those considered a fiduciary for breach of their duty of care based on ERISA Section 404. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is attempting to cover some and possibly all of this.[citation needed] Arthur Andersen On June 15 2002, Arthur Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents related to its audit of Enron. Since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not allow convicted felons to audit public companies, the firm agreed to surrender its licenses and its right to practice before the SEC on August 31. On May 31 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously overturned Andersen's conviction due to flaws in the jury instructions. Despite this ruling, it is highly unlikely Andersen will ever return as a viable business. The firm lost nearly all of its clients when it was indicted, and there are over 100 civil suits pending against the firm related to its audits of Enron and other companies. It began winding down its American operations after the indictment. From a high of 28,000 employees in the U.S. and 85,000 worldwide, the firm is now down to around 200 based primarily in Chicago. Most of their attention is on handling the lawsuits. Andersen was one of the "Big Five" large international accounting firms. Its demise left only four big international accounting firms (the Big Four accounting firms). This concentration of the industry is still causing difficulty for large corporations that need to use more than one accounting firm for auditing and non-auditing services. In addition, the pricing of accounting services is less elastic as large corporations feel that they must use a Big Four firm. Societal and legal impacts Enron's collapse also contributed to the creation of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), signed into law on July 30 2002. It is considered the most significant change to federal securities laws since FDR's New Deal in the 1930s. Other countries have also adopted new corporate governance legislations. This law provides stronger penalties for fraud and, among other things, requires public companies to avoid making loans to management, to report more information to the public, to maintain stronger independence from their auditors, and most controversially, to report on and have audited, their financial internal control procedures. However, certain provisions in the legislation are currently under review in Congress. Securities law historian Joel S. Seligman was quoted in The Washington Post saying, "[t]his was the most important corporate scandal of our lifetimes. It was one of the immediate causes of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the governance reforms of the New York Stock Exchange and NASD, and the most consequential reorientation of corporate behavior in living memory." [7] In California, widespread public anger over the power crisis and its financial impact on the state were a major factor contributing to the recall of Governor Gray Davis and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Trials * Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States * Enron Broadband trial * The NatWest Three - three former UK NatWest bankers, recently extradited to the United States in a case that has generated considerable controversy about UK/US extradition laws. * Lay and Skilling trial * Regents of the University of California v. Credit Suisse First Boston (USA), Inc. * Nigerian barge trial Trivia This article contains a trivia section. Content in this section should be integrated into the body of the article or removed. * The Law and Order Criminal Intent episode Tuxedo Hill was based on the Enron scandal * The baseball stadium Enron Field in Houston, Texas, named after the company, was opened on April 7, 2000, at game where Kenneth Lay threw out the first pitch. That game was attended by George W. Bush, who was then governor of Texas. The field was renamed to Astros Field after the collapse of Enron, to avoid negative publicity, with the Houston Astros having to pay Enron $5 million to get out of the deal. The park's name was later changed to Minute Maid Park. * Enron's iconic Houston headquarters, a 50-story oval glass tower at 1400 Smith Street[8], was sold for $55.5 million, far below its $93 million local tax valuation. The current sellers had bought the property for $285 million in the 1990s.[9] Enron relocated to 4 Houston Center.[10][11][12] * In 2002 the book Anatomy of Greed, written by Brian Cruver, is released as the first insider account of events surrounding Enron's collapse. The book and Cruver's experience were turned into the CBS television movie The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron, starring Brian Dennehy. In 2007, The Wall Street Journal listed the book as one of the five best books about life on Wall Street, along with The Predators Ball, Liar's Poker, Bonfire of the Vanities, and Barbarians at the Gate.[13][14][15] * The 2003 non-fiction book Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, written by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, was a bestseller. The book was turned into a film that was nominated for the 2005 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.[16] [17] * As a result of their investigation the FERC made a large portion of Enron's email database available to the public. This database comprises roughly 500,000 email messages and has become a standard dataset in email research.[18] * The movie Fun with Dick and Jane, starring Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni, features a special thank you to individuals involved in the scandal, as well as the company. The thank you includes other companies involved in similar cases, and precedes the cast listing in the credits to the film. The film itself parodies the Enron scandal. Also, at the end of the film, a friend of Dick and Jane's ironically states that he recently got employed by Enron. * In The Simpsons episode "Special Edna", Principal Skinner, when his request for engagement to Edna Krabappel is rejected, mourns that the only ride he wants to go on is "The Ride of Broken Dreams", which happens to be an Enron-themed roller coaster that looks like a plummeting stock chart. As the riders climb up the coaster, they chant "We'll be rich!" before going down a sheer drop into the poorhouse. * Playboy devoted photo spreads to the women of Enron,[3] and released a movie with the name Playboy: Women of Enron (2002).[4] * During the final scene of the film "Fun with Dick and Jane", Enron is referenced by a man who lost his previous job to corporate fraud (during the Globodyne scandal), foreshadowing that he will again lose his job in the same scenario. * Following the collapse of Enron many ex-Enron employee bloggers (such as Thomas Duff and Ted Barlow) commentated on the ongoing scandal even while looking for new positions. * In The O.C. Greg Hoades refers to the The Newport Group as "Orange County's Enron" * There is an untitled film about the fall of Enron that is being developed as a starring vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio, who will produce the film through his production company, Appian Way. It's been stated that DiCaprio will not play one of the Enron executives, but a company accountant who exposes the company's financial mismanagement. The film may be based on Kurt Eichenwald's book Conspiracy of Fools. Enron companies * EnronOnline * Azurix * Dabhol Power Company * Enron International * LJM Enron fallout * Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States * California electricity crisis * Conspiracy of Fools * Pension fund losses with Enron * The Enron Three * J. Clifford Baxter, Enron executive * Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room Corporation-related * Definition of "Cook the books" from Wiktionary * Corporate abuse * Corporate crime * Corporate governance * Creative accounting * Mark to market * Vitality curve - Management construct, where the least performing 10% are fired each year. * List of corporate executives charged with crimes * List of notable business failures
