Why Did Enron Collapse
Enron was one of the world’s largest electricity, natural gas, and broadband trading companies, with revenues of over $100 billion until its crash in the fall of 2001. Enron’s strategic intent was to become the blue-chip energy and communication company of the 21st century through its business efforts in four core areas: Enron Wholesale Services, Enron Broadband Services, Enron Energy Services, and Enron Transportation Services. Enron management claimed that each of these business units supported the company’s vision of “offering a wide range of physical, transportation, financial and technical solutions to thousands of customers around the world.” But Enron’s aspirations of becoming the leader in the energy and communications came to a screeching halt because of a strategy that was flawed by unethical behavior mainly GREED. But how does a corporation that becomes so successful become so greedy? I am of the opinion that the main reason was due to the corporate strategy that was implemented that was more concerned with the continuing growth of stock prices instead of looking at the long run. In the following paragraphs it is shown what constitutes a good strategy and examples of what went wrong.
Primary internal considerations are company strengths, weaknesses, and competitive capabilities; managers’ personal ambitions, philosophies, and ethics; and the company’s culture and shared values. Internal considerations have become a very important part of a company’s strategy in the past few years. A corporation’s strategy must be written so that a corporation is seen as a good corporate citizen. by saying that a good corporate strategy is one that is shaped by management having an ethical view of external and internal considerations. External considerations include societal, political, regulatory, and community factors along with competitive conditions and overall industry attractiveness; a company’s market opportunities and threats. External considerations on the other hand are of great importance in today’s business world due to the global market that exists. One example of how this can go wrong is when Enron was made a choice to use questionable bookkeeping methods in order to show a huge profit for people in higher levels of management with huge bonuses while at the same time hiding an enormous amount of debt. Tom Fowler of the Houston Chronicle Enron reported the following example about how an Enron employee profited from the misstating of finances; “The partnerships called LJM1 and LJM2, which were formed using Enron equity and outside capital as a way to hedge against the risks involved in some of the company's new lines of business, such as Internet broadband trading and water. They were also designed to help the company grow quickly without adding too much debt to its books or diluting the value of the company's stock. This was accomplished by former CFO Andy Fastow's performing dual roles as Enron CFO and managing director of the entities. Fastow’s position was a cause for concern for Wall Street because it would put him on both sides of
Some topics in this essay:
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Services Enron,
Wall Street,
LJM1 LJM2,
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Chronicle Enron,
Enron CFO,
corporate strategy,
Andy Fastow's,
services enron,
internal considerations,
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external considerations,
upper management,
corporate citizen,
broadband trading,
stock price,
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Approximate Word count = 1277
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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