The Fall of Enron

Not so long ago, Enron’s name was amid a lexicon of corporate and political power. However in a matter of months Enron transformed from one of the greatest corporate success stories in US history to the centre of perhaps the largest corporate scandal the business community has ever seen, engulfing company executives, one of the worlds largest accounting firms, politicians and Wall street traders. This paper analysis’s the amazing journey of Enron form an organisation held in the highest of esteem by the community and envied by competitors, to its shocking demise leaving its name a disgrace and sparking a long line of investigations and criminal and civil charges laid upon its officers and accountants from burned investors and former trading partners.

In the early eighties when takeovers were the business strategy of choice, Kenneth Lay successfully fended off a hostile takeover of his pipeline company, Houston Natural Gas. It was then that Lay realised that the key to the compa...