Fraud

Essay text:

- despite this elaborate corporate governance network, Enron was able to attract large sums of capital to fund questionable business model, conceal its true performance through a series of accounting and financial maneuvers and hype its stock to unsustainable levels - the stresses that the business model created for Enron’s financial reporting, and how key capital market intermediaries played a role in the company’s rise and fall - growth impressed the capital markets and few asked questions - the company was unsure if it could continue to earn high returns from gas trading - it was believed that the major barrier to entry in gas trading was Enron’s market knowledge achieved through its dominant market position - many other firms were positioned to challenge Enrons dominance, including large gas producers - in comparable markets, early rents to first movers had quickly dissipated as competitors entered - the internet provided a low cost platform for existing or potential competition to develop energy markets that could compete with EnronOnline - Enron had some success in applying the gas bank trading model to electricity, but the viability of the model for some of the other products selected for expansion was uncertain - Even if Enron was successful in the international energy market questions could be raised about whether the company could create a sustainable advantage over competitors that later sought to enter the market - Enron took full advantage of accounting limitations in managing its earnings and balance sheet to portray a rosy picture of its performance - Enrons primary challenge in using mark-to-market accounting was estimating the market value of contracts, which in some cases ran as long as 20 years - Enron used special purpose entities to fun or manage risks associated with specific assets - Special purpose entities are shell firms created by a sponsor, but funded by independent equity investors and debt financing - Enron provided only minimum disclosures on its relations with special purpose entities - Investment fund managers failed to recognize or act on Enrons risks because they had only modest incentives - A range of academic research finding have found evidence tat sell-side analysts are influences by their proximity to investment banking - The experience with Enron – stock compensation programs can motivate managers to make decisions to pump up short-term stock performance, but fail to create medium or long term value - Enrons audit committee had more experience then many - The audit committee was in no position to second guess the auditors on technical questions related to the special purposes and did not challenge several important transactions - Most of the proposals for improving auditing have focused on the potential conflicts between auditing and consulting - Incentives inside the firm need to encourage audit professionals to exercise judgement and walk away from the clients that don’t deserve their certification Three Americans Win Nobel for Economics - the americans challenged an assumption that has underpinned economic theory - argued that markets don’t always operate efficient because the buyers and sellers don’t always have access to the information they need to make optimal choices - if imperfect information sometimes distorts markets then governments need to fix distortions - markets rely on access to good financial data and sound bankruptcy laws, but he argued that many of these countries didn’t have the regulation institutions needed to ensure that the markets would operate soundly Gaps in Gaap - numbers we are accustomed to using for making decisions are abstractions from reality - critics of conventional accounting believe that they also distort reality - AOLs only substantial profit is its subscriber base, but so far accounting is concerned the money invested to build that base was an expense not an investment - The market recognizes that if accounting rules don’t, that convention measures are inadequate - GAAP says that money spent training staff is an expense, money disbursed never to be recaptured - But well trained staff is worth more than a state of the art machine to many - It is helpful for investors to have information about staff turnover rates, or have brand names valued by Interbrand or American Appraisal - The stock market recognized, if accounts did not, that the fall of communism had opened new worlds to American brands and greatly enhanced their value - Conventional wisdom is that capitalizing RD spending or advertising outlays is aggressive because there is no way of knowing if the spending will ever pay - Accounting rules are very confusing for mergers and acquisitions - Capitalizing franchises and RD and employee training can be misleading and open the way for book cooking