Enron. This book explores the rise and fall of Enron. Kenneth Lay, who was the CEO of this company. Kenneth Lay was born on April 15, 1942 in Tyrone, Missouri. Kenneth Lay started his life in poverty. His parents owned a pet food store that went bankrupt. Kenneth Lay didn't live in a house with indoor plumbing until he was 11 years old. He had a difficult childhood, with many household responsibilities like working hard driving tractors and plowing fields. He always dreamed that one day he would become rich in business. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Lay was always a good student. He attended the University of Missouri on scholarship. He became an economics student through an economics course taught by his teacher Pinkey Walker. It was because of Walker that Kenneth Lay pursued his master's degree in order to have endless opportunities to succeed in business. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from the University of Missouri. He was also drafted into the Army and later attended Navy Officer Candidate School. From 1968 to 1971 he was an economist. In 1970, after earning his doctorate in economics from Houton University, he worked as an energy assistant to the United States Secretary of State. After graduating, Kenneth worked for a few years for a company called Humble Oil, which later became Exxon. Kenneth has worked many different jobs. From 1965 to 1968 he worked at Humble Oil. From 1968 to 1968, he worked in the United States Navy as a supply officer. From 1969 to 1973 he worked as a lecturer and assistant professor. From 1971 to 1972, he worked at the Federal Energy Commission as an assistant to the commissioner. He held many other job titles during his life. He grew to such stature that he turned down an offer to join the elder George Bush's cabinet. She was naturally a kind person, very few people held grudges against her. It wasn't until the fall of Enron that his world came crashing down. Despite the controversy, Enron's CEO has won numerous awards. He won a Leadership Award, Private Sector Council, Business Hall of Fame in Texas, 1997. Horatio Alger Award, Horatio Award and Association of Distinguished Americans. Enron grew out of a small company called Houston Natural Gas, joined by former Exxon employee Kenneth Lay in 1984. Because Houston Natural Gas was a relatively small company, the rise of large companies and the stock market threatened to wipe the company off the map. However, with Lay at the helm, the company was able to fend off any takeovers and double its growth. In 1986, after many changes and increased growth, the company changed its name to Enron and moved to Lay's hometown of Houston, Texas. . At that time, Enron was both a gas and oil company. The company specializes in transporting natural gas through its pipelines, stretching thousands of miles across the continental United States. As the company continued to prosper, it reformed its business approach, becoming one of the leading energy producers and distributors in the United States and the United Kingdom, while becoming more involved in the commercial market. Ambition and determination truly propelled Enron to new heights, helping it become one of America's most powerful and innovative companies, even being "voted Most Innovative among FORTUNE's Most Admired Companies." » for “six consecutive years”. However, with manysuccess, temptation arose and good intentions were misplaced. Damaging arrogance, risky behavior and deception ultimately justified the demise of the mighty Enron. Enron was often praised for pioneering a more libertarian vision, an influence often attributed to a man named Jeffery Skilling. As CEO of a subsidiary company of Enron, Enron Finance, Skilling possessed the ability to directly influence the very structure of the natural gas market. As such, Enron worked to commoditize every service and product it possibly could, dabbling in everything from gas, electricity, water, oil, and even broadband. Before long, the company moved into the stock market, becoming a full-fledged trading enterprise. Market-to-market accounting is a method that “rather than accounts reflecting actual profit, mark-to-market accounting allows accounts to reflect actual profits.” “estimated future profits” which would explain the company's surprisingly precise calculations of future profits. However, despite rather large gross profits and overall success, the company still experienced financial difficulties. In 1987, for example, the company reported a loss of "$85 million" with an "actual loss of $142 million to $190 million." Of course, this moment, along with many others, was quickly covered up, creating the illusion that such losses were not as extreme as they actually were. Enron's chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, employed a tactic of manipulating monetary values ​​from a complex system of trading agencies in favor of the company. The purpose of this tactic was to create an illusion of stable revenue for the company, as previously mentioned. In fact, Fastow allegedly “created and directed some of the companies involved” (Probert) in this illusory financial strategy. Nevertheless, the monetarist façade fashioned by Enron's ringleaders remained unquestionable for several apparently prosperous years. So much so that many of the company's employees had no idea of ​​the true nature of the circumstances. In a turn of events that would send shockwaves throughout the industry, the mega-corporation would find itself exposing its own fraud to the world. to testify. After all, it was only a matter of time before the reality of Enron's unethical conduct would backfire in such an extremely damaging way. By 2001, the integrity of the once-monumental company was called into question, such that its stock began to fall dramatically, from "$80 at the start of the year to $40" (Helyar) by mid-year. august. In addition to being a rather questionable means of earning income, Enron also had a reputation for outright brutality. It was testified that the company had an internal system in which staff “attempted to crush not only outsiders but each other” in order to rise through the ranks. Speculation from outside sources first emerged when Jeff Skilling himself resigned from his new position as CEO. However, Ken Lay, resuming his role as CEO, had formally denied that these withdrawals from the company were linked to financial problems, saying that "there were no 'accounting problems, commercial problems or reserve problems » at Enron. It was believed that Skilling had already suspected the company's impending failure and exposure, choosing to leave everything behind in order to avoid the consequences. Soon after, many major shareholders, including Enron's own executives, began selling or trading all shareslinked to Enron, an indicator of inevitable distress within the company. Shortly thereafter, the Wall Street Journal, along with many other media outlets, launched a relentless campaign against the company, specifically targeting Andrew Fastow. Fastow was thrown under the bus, so to speak, when it was discovered that he had periodically taken some of Enron's already falsified revenues for himself. Lay then attempted to rebuild his company's crumbling credibility, but these efforts proved unsuccessful. Shortly thereafter, Enron officially declared bankruptcy, causing the biggest scandal in modern business to come to light. In the following years, Enron's entire assets would be sold in an attempt to pay off its massive debts, which included an "estimated $67 billion" to the company's "20,000 creditors." However, it was estimated that these creditors only received "20 to 40 percent" (Helyar) of the money owed to them. With this, Enron's entire staff had lost their jobs; many of them were ultimately brought to justice on the same charges as other major perpetrators of the scandal. Andrew Fastow was sentenced to six years in prison on criminal charges after testifying against Kenneth Lay and Jeffery Skilling in 2006. Skilling and Lay, however, refused to admit any wrongdoing on their part. Their high-profile hearings focused primarily on whether fraud had actually occurred within the company and its environments, and to what extent. These cases required that the parties involved had “committed intentional, willful, and intentional misconduct.” At first, this seemed like a trivial matter for prosecutors, because Enron had its auditor, Arthur Anderson, who approved every financially motivated decision and action. Ultimately, however, such efforts demonstrated an even greater failure for the mega-corporation. Skilling was “sentenced to 24 years in prison…on 19 counts.” Lay was also sentenced to prison, but died before he could serve his sentence. Finally, Arthur Anderson himself was disbanded, along with all the other Enron auditors, and although he tried again, he was never able to fully rebuild his reputation following his involvement in the scandal. So, through numerous leads and investigations, the once powerful and innovative mega-corporation, Enron, finally fell. Since the fall of Enron, business education has been targeted, with truly respectable intentions. To be right and fair in the business world, especially as an accountant or manager, one must not only learn ethical behavior, but also be able to understand that behavior accordingly. However, it seems that certain moral positions still remain undefined in the typical set of courses. For example, when Jeffery Skilling was studying at Harvard Business School, ethics was not normally part of the core curriculum. It is believed that many students "viewed ethics as a matter of not getting caught rather than how to do the right thing in the first place" (Fusaro 148), which naturally poses a serious problem. Evidence for this notion comes from the media interpretation of ethics scandals, such as Enron, showing that "business schools had not sufficiently revised their curricula to cover the teaching of business ethics." business” (Cox 1). Nevertheless, today, moral behavior, as well as simple ethics, are encouraged in business schools, as supported by numerous studies, including those by “Penn and Collier (1985)” (Cox 4) and “ Early and Kelley.