What Went Wrong at Enron: Everyone's Guide to the Largest Bankruptcy in U.S. History

Book Description

An easy answer guide to the difficult questions surrounding Enron
What Went Wrong at Enron explains the critical steps, transactions, and events that led to the demise of a company that was once considered one of the most innovative corporations in the United States. Energy risk management expert Peter Fusaro gets inside Enron and provides a coherent account of the who, why, where, and when of this corporate debacle, without sacrificing the complexity of what has happened. Enron has been front-page news for months, but confusion still remains about what actually happened. What Went Wrong at Enron is written for readers who find themselves wondering what exactly is an energy trading company, what was the sequence of events that caused the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history, and what does this all mean for me.

Customer Reviews:

This is the thinnest book on Enron that I read; it covers the whole affair very superficially........2006-05-20

I don't get the impression from reading the book that the authors have even tried to analyzed the financial holdings that was set up. It is the thinnest book on Enron that I read, for very good reason.

When Too Much is Barely Enough.......2005-06-10

Fusaro, P. and Miller, R. M., 2003. What went wrong at Enron, Everyone's guide to the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. John Wiley and Sons, paperback, 240 p.

The moral and cultural lessons of Enron range from the need for ethical behaviour, grounding in truthfulness, honesty, transparency and a need for complete disclosure in accounting and corporate structure. This is the ultimate source of insight into how it all happened. Other sources also point to the underlying dangers represented by a betrayal of trust within the capitalism market system.

The Enron style of approach to flourish in newly deregulated energy and utility markets that have been engineered by governments since the mid 1980s. The levels of executive culpability and it shows the decay and or frailty of underlying value systems which should stand against such events. The events and actions that led to Enron's demise have far more and significant implications to the fate and quality of our own society.

But is Enron a systemic problem or is the ultimate problem the nature of market capitalism itself. If the latter then to avoid more Enron's it is necessary to have moral and ethical tethers to clearly defined absolute terms such as right and wrong (good and evil) in a corporate business environment, otherwise concepts on which an economic system depends, such as trust between all participants, will ultimately breakdown.

Internally, the dynamics of the Enron enterprise set out in this book show a salutary lesson of what should not be present in an apparently healthy and profitable corporate enterprise: failure of 'knowledge conditions', senior management being isolated from those at operational levels (?); individuals pursuing sub-goals that are contrary to overall corporate goals; restrictions on the flows of bad news as opposed to any positive 'spin'.

The underlying causes of an Enron outcome are in fact within the nature of corporations themselves. Their hierarchical structure, limited span of control, self-interest, limited discourse and intimidatory corporate culture all point to a flaw in the nature of many public-listed corporations. Some suggest that the Enron case is one which warrants a revaluation of the shareholder centric model of corporations; management actions should not longer be orientated at maximising the current share price.

Some see the lessons of Enron as being a company that, when in trouble, was unwilling to admit its own shortcomings and thus became driven to cover-up a few bad decisions by making even worse ones. An early admission and some critical changes in operations could have saved the trading side of the business. Instead profit growth at all costs an unwillingness to admit that poor decisions had been made, led to even more exaggeration and fraudulent reporting.

The key problem with Enron was that it had all the surfical signs of a good corporate citizen in place with corporate social responsibility, business ethics tools and status symbols all in place. The greatest danger is that the Enron situation is not atypical of many aspects of many corporate organisations: those who closed their eyes to wrong doings (in Enron) were rewarded; others who sought to give warnings were punished; the win-at-all-costs mentality. The Enron lesson is that business is in the long term only going to survive by virtue of developing and following ethical behaviour. No one single error occurred just the compounding of many errors, all of which were preventable. It was based on a success at all cost culture where the ends always justified the means.

Enron is not explicable as just ethical and moral failure without examining why these failures occurred. Enron was a corporate product of both willingness to bend the rules and the opportunity to bend them. Others suggest that there are limited lessons to be learnt from the Enron story: that is to say Enron is bankrupt because of speculation and legal but unsound accounting and financing schemes. This view suggests that this proves that the free-market works; speculators and those at the margin of the market must suffer as and when the market turns. As such Enron investors were punished by the stock market for their poor judgment. The energy markets adjusted to Enron's collapse with few problems. As for the stock market crash, well, booms and busts are a natural part of a healthy capitalist economy.

A must have book for anyone who wants to know the inside story.

Other academic reading:

. Benston, G. J., and Hartgraves, A. L., 2002. Enron: what happened and what can we learn from it. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 21, 105-127.

Carson, T. L., 2003. Self-interest and business ethics: some lessons of the recent corporate scandals. Journal of Business Ethics, 43, 389-394.

Chatergee, S., 2003. Enron's incremental descent into bankruptcy: a strategic and organisational analysis. Long Range Planning 36, 133-149.

Cohan, J. A., 2002. "I didn't know" and "I was only doing my job": Has corporate governance careened out of control? A case study of Enron's information myopia. Journal of Business Ethics, 40, 275-299.

Currall, S., and Epstein, M. J., 2003. The Fragility of Organizational Trust: Lessons from the rise and fall of Enron. Organizational Dynamics, 32 (2), 193-206.

Desai, A. B. and Rittenberg, T., 1997. Global ethics: an integrative framework for MNEs. Journal of Business Ethics, 16, 791-800.

Sims, R. R. and Brinkman, J., 2003. Enron ethics (or: culture matters more than codes). Journal of Business Ethics 45, 243-245.

Spector, B., 2003. HRM at Enron: the unindited co-conspirator. Organizational Dynamics, 32 (2), 207-22.

Dr I Lavering
Adjunct Professor
MBT Program UNSW

Thin.......2003-07-30

Let's start with the positives:
- the book is easy to read and reasonably well written;
- the basic facts of the story are covered;
- the book starts the story way back before the problems emerged so that you get a feel for what the business was up to.

But
- it is very short book for such a complex subject
- the "unravelling" - the investigations into "what went wrong" are (ironically) not well covered
- there is almost no coverage of the Andersen issues

So save your dollar, pound, euro or yen - don't waste it on this book.

A Shakespearean tragedy.......2003-07-09

What really went wrong at Enron?

A question that cannot be answered easily due to its nature of complexity. Thousands and hundreds investors, including Enron¡¦s employees who vested their retirement benefits in the s401k plan solely with Enron shares¡K..The horrible downfall alarmed the investment community, hurt the professional society (accountant, lawyer, underwriter etc.) and credibility of the monitoring commission¡K. The U.S. government reacted with the new legislation (Sabanes-Oxley Act) as an ¡§attempt¡¨ to tackle the problem, trying to put the company¡¦s management back on track to shoulder its fiduciary duty to the company¡¦s shareholder. But, does it work? The extent to which the various parties¡¦ responsibilities is still clouded.

If we do not really analyze the root causes which led to the Enron¡¦s downfall, we never know the answer. This book, written with the targeted general audience, is published at the right time to give the public a good chance to find the ashes in the smoke. At least for the moment.

According to this book, the tragedy was played by an arrogant CEO, greedy senior executive, loyal whistleblower, with the backdrop of a wrongly conceived free economy principle. The book is well written and gives insightful analyses based on the available evidence and traces. Some of the factors leading to the tragedy noted by the authors are:

*X The use of SPE (Special Purpose Vehicles) in accounting to keep off the accounting profits as well as to hide the potential liabilities
*X The constantly fearing environment built by the Corporate Culture emphasizing on a sense of urgency
*X Over-extension of operations in the deregulated energy and telecommunication market
*X Mark-to-market accounting principles
*X Less than full company¡¦s disclosure tendency
*X Valuation problem of customized contracts
* Making commitment as a counter-party to every trade in arbitrage markets
*X Trading from natural gas to electricity to bandwidth to 1800 different products in the Enron online
*X Conflicting company¡¦s strategy: asset-lite vs. debt heavy financed investments
*X Manipulated earning estimated to meet expectations
*X Deals financed by high Enron¡¦s stock price
*X Excessive investment in optic fibre networks

The list could go on and on. In fact, Enron went to the extent that deals were made just for the sake of making them. The more you read about the book, the more you feel it is a Shakespearean tragedy ¡V things are certain to get worse with all of these interrelated factors playing on stage. The general audience, those who believed that the play had a good ending, bought the tickets but found that the play was ultimately turn out to be a tragic one. They suffered. However, the director said: ¡§You bought the tickets because you believed in the play had a good ending. I didn¡¦t say that it would end in that way.¡¨ Refund? No.

The investigation into Enron¡¦s alleged sham trading and potential fraud scheme is still in progress as of this writing¡K..I highly recommend the book to the general readers, although it is better if you are financially literate. It is a thought-provoking and interesting read, especially to the CPAs.

Lacks specifics, too many pointless analogies........2003-05-22

Enron's greed and financial scandals, along with the rise and fall, are interesting in itself. This book, though it does explain the fall and is easily readable, isn't intriguing enough to capture the reader's attention. In fact, more than half is a description of how Enron came to be and what there business model is. A chunk of the book is just photocopied evidence pasted in the appendix. Only a minute section describes the scandal and accounting frauds.

The author loves anologies. He devotes pages to baseball card trading, and then sort of compares it to Enron's business. While these analogies help with understanding the business model, it's often over-simplified with a glaring lack of details. What I found was a lack of hard numbers and statistics which meant I couldn't put the failings into perspective. Also, the first half of the book where he details Enron, he seems to be praising their business, then hand wavingly, he points to a few corrupted examples. It almost appears that the author thinks Enron would still be a powerhouse if it wasn't for a few specific incidents.

As a book, it gets the job done. It shows the errors of Enron in a way that any non financial person could understand. It does tend to oversimplify, and it's glaring lack of numbers and details hurt it in the end.

Book Description

The job market continues to change. Highly skilled and specialized workers are in demand. Traditional education cannot meet all the needs to create specialty skill workers. Certification provides up-to-date training and development while promoting individual or professional skills and knowledge in a focused manner. Certification as a way of continuing professional eduction can also be more cost effective.

Employee certification is a lasting trend that will become stronger as we continue the transition to a workplace that emphasizes focused skill development and proper deployment of knowledge workers. Companies seeking to recreate themselves as learning organizations are looking for efficient ways to include certifications as part of their developmental repertoire.

This third edition of The Guide to National Professional Certification Programs is restructured to be easier for professionals, professional organizations, and individuals to use. All sponsor information and certification descriptions are updated. New programs and sponsors have been added, including vendor-based specialty certification tests for competence in a particular area or subject. Indexes are improved to be quick and easy to use in looking up programs, sponsors, and certification test information.

Book Description

(Parent with price) Volume I contains subjective reviews, specialized and novel technique descriptions by guest authors. Part 1 includes contributions on purely analytical techniques and Part 2 includes matters such as development of mass spectrometers, stability of ion sources, standards and calibration, correction procedures and experimental methods to obtain isotopic fractionation factors.

Volume II will be available in 2005.

Book Description

Galaxy groups and clusters provide excellent laboratories for studying galaxy properties in different environments and at different look-back times. In particular, the recent detections of high-redshift cluster candidates, only possible with the current high-technology instrumentation, add a new dimension to the problem. Along with the ever increasing computing power and sophisticated algorithms to model clusters of galaxies, it may help us to understand the origins of today's groups and clusters, as well as of their member galaxies. These workshop proceedings provide a snapshot of the current research in this subject, covering the observations, theory and numerical simulations relevant to galaxy evolution in groups and clusters. In this book, intended primarily to researchers in the field, particular emphasis is given to the recent impressive progress in the field, on important new results, and on the future prospects and open questions to be tackled.

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The Galaxies of the Local Group
Sidney Bergh
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521651816

Book Description

The Local Group is a small cluster of galaxies of which thirty-five members are currently known, including the Milky Way. With characteristic clarity of expression, Sidney van den Bergh provides a complete overview of all that is known about the galaxies of the Local Group and their evolution. He also places this knowledge in the wider context of continuing studies of galaxy formation and evolution, the cosmic distance scale, and the conditions in the early Universe. This volume thoroughly details our current understanding of each of the thirty-five members of the Local Group, as well as those galaxies previously regarded as possible members. The book goes on to examine the mass, stability and evolution of the Local Group as a whole and includes many important, previously unpublished results and conclusions.

Download Description

The Local Group is a small cluster of galaxies of which 35 members are currently known, including the Milky Way. At least half of all galaxies in the Universe are thought to belong to similar groups. This authoritative volume provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of what is currently known about the Local Group. It begins with a summary of each member galaxy, as well as those galaxies previously regarded as possible members. The book examines the mass, stability and evolution of the Local Group as a whole and includes many important previously unpublished results and conclusions. With clarity, Professor van den Bergh provides a masterful summary of all that is known about the galaxies of the Local Group and their evolution, and expertly places this knowledge in the wider context of on-going studies of galaxy formation and evolution, the cosmic distance scale, and the conditions in the early Universe.

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Author's name is wrong

Atlas of Compact Groups of Galaxies
Robert C. Hickson
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 2884491163

Book Description

Compact groups of galaxies have been the subject of considerable interest since the discovery of the first compact group by Stephan in 1877. The Atlas of Compact Groups of Galaxies presents optical images of all 100 of these groups, assembled from CCD images obtained at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). The work is the result of a search undertaken using the entire set of Palomar Sky Survey redprints in the collections of the University of British Columbia for small groups of galaxies satisfying well-defined selection criteria. The atlas, combining the best available optical images of the groups with a concise tabulation of the relevant group data, is sure to become an indispensable reference for those engaged in the study of compact groups or interacting galaxies in general.

Customer Reviews:

Author's name is wrong.......2006-04-09

Amazon has the author's name incorrect. His name is Paul Hickson.

An Atlas of Local Group Galaxies (Astrophysics and Space Science Library)

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How do you rate an *Atlas*?

An Atlas of Local Group Galaxies (Astrophysics and Space Science Library)
Paul W. Hodge , Brooke P. Skelton , and Joy Ashizawa
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 140200673X

Book Description

This Atlas provides a complete set of images of Local Group Galaxies (excluding the three for which identification atlases are already in print) and shows the most important objects, including many thousands of individual stars and interstellar objects.

It is unique in its coverage and format and provides a source of these fundamental data that will be used for many years. Researchers, students and even amateur astronomers will be able to use the Atlas to identify and study the various components of the nearly 30 important galaxies covered by the Atlas.

The objects identified on the more than 200 charts include variable stars, globular star clusters, open star clusters, stellar associations, emission regions, supernova remnants, planetary nebulae and dust clouds. Each galaxy is accompanied by an extensive bibliography.

Customer Reviews:

How do you rate an *Atlas*?.......2006-10-10

An Atlas is a difficult type of book to review--unless there are flaws! I am not a professional astronomer, but a serious amateur who has a professional scientific background. I bought this book for my own interest, and I am somewhat mystified by the number of errors I have uncovered in just a day or two of examination.

It appears that at one point in the publication of this atlas, that some of the electronic materials were inadvertantly lost due to a computer failure. This necessitated an effort to reconstruct some of the lost data, but it appears that there were still some unresolved problems. This is truly unfortunate, especially for an expensive reference such as this, to be plagued with flaws that became obvious even to a non-professional reviewer.

As an example, there is a single plate of the Fornax Spheroidal Dwarf Galaxy, with the globular clusters identified. Upon careful study, only one globular cluster (NGC 1049=GC3) is correctly identified; 2 oter objects identified as clusters are actually stars, and one is a galaxy.

There are numerous errors in the tables, where references to plate numbers are incorrect.

I have some serious reservations regards recommending this book to others. The print job is excellent, and the plates (really the heart of the book) are well reproduced; this, however , does not compensate for the errors contained therin.

The Galaxies of the Local Group (Cambridge Astrophysics)

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The Galaxies of the Local Group (Cambridge Astrophysics)
Sidney Bergh
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521037433

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Groups of Galaxies in the Nearby Universe: Proceedings of the ESO Workshop held at Santiago de Chile, December 5 - 9, 2005 (ESO Astrophysics Symposia)

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Groups of Galaxies in the Nearby Universe: Proceedings of the ESO Workshop held at Santiago de Chile, December 5 - 9, 2005 (ESO Astrophysics Symposia)

Manufacturer: Springer
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3540711724

Book Description

For every galaxy in the field or in clusters, there are about three galaxies in groups. The Milky Way itself resides in a group, and groups can be found at high redshift. The current generation of 10-m class telescopes and space facilities allows the observation of the members of nearby groups with exquisite detail, and their properties can be correlated with the global properties of their host group. Groups in the local Universe offer us the chance to study galaxies in environments characterized by strong interactions. In the cosmological context, groups trace large-scale structures better than clusters, and the evolution of groups and clusters appears to be related. All these aspects of research on groups of galaxies are summarized in this book written by scientists working in various fields.

The Local Group as an Astrophysical Laboratory (Space Telescope Science Institute Symposium Series)

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The Local Group as an Astrophysical Laboratory (Space Telescope Science Institute Symposium Series)

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521847591

Book Description

The Local Group of galaxies consists of the Milky Way and all of its neighbors. The proximity of these galaxies allows for detailed studies of the processes that have led to their formation, structures, and evolution. In particular, studies of the Local Group can test predictions of structure formation that are based on dark energy and cold dark matter. This book presents a collection of review papers, written by world experts, on some of the most important aspects of Local Group Astrophysics. It is an invaluable resource for both professional researchers and graduate students in this cutting-edge area of research.

Clusters and Groups of Galaxies (Astrophysics and Space Science Library)

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Clusters and Groups of Galaxies (Astrophysics and Space Science Library)

Manufacturer: Springer
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Galaxy Evolution in Groups and Clusters. (CD-rom Included).

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Galaxy Evolution in Groups and Clusters. (CD-rom Included).
Catarina Lobo Et Al
Manufacturer: Kluwer Academic Pubs.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N63NE6

Galaxy groups and clusters: A visual and CCD observing guide for the advanced amateur astronomer

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Galaxy groups and clusters: A visual and CCD observing guide for the advanced amateur astronomer
Robert McGown
Manufacturer: Astronomical League
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006S8ZHG

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