Recently, a spate of corporate scandals have rocked the American financial landscape; among these events, the case of Enron has been described as the archetype because of its magnitude (Toobin, 2003). This brief report will examine the case, focusing on what destroyed the company, why the markets either could or would not detect the problem prior to the collapse, and what policies need to be in place to prevent repetitions of this corporate debacle. It will be argued that a combination of corporate greed and a failure of accountability, coupled with inadequate regulatory compliance and oversight, led to the virtual collapse of the seventh-ranked Fortune 500 company (Toobin, 2003).
The first question focuses on what happened to bring about Enron's collapse and bankruptcy. Enron's corporate culture was set by former chairman Kenneth L. Lay and former chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling, respectively known as Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside (Toobin, 2003). Skilling transformed Enron from a simple natural gas pipeline operation into a futuristic trading enterprise, a company that could, in theory, own nothing but the ability to broker most of the world's energy transactions (Farrell, 2003). In the process, company executives and their accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, engaged in what Chaffin and Fidler (2002) call multiple irregularities including off-balance sheet partnerships, aggressive accounting that obscured (if not overtly disguised) many financial statistics of significance, financial manipulation designed to conceal losses and make operations appear highly profitable to actual and potential stockholders and institutional investors, and the awarding of enormous cash and stock bonuses to key staff. The source of Enron's corporate culture, according to Chaffin and Fidler (2002), was Kenneth Lay, whose superficial emphasis on "Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence" masked a determination to take wha
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