The Enron Collapse By: Jeff Porter Kevin Clark ... - Franklin College

Introduction
Companies have mission statements that often read like inspirational leaflets.
Enron’s mission was at first to be the world’s greatest energy company then later revised
in early 2001 to be the “world’s greatest company”. In the late 1990’s, Enron seemed to
have accomplished their mission accumulating vast amounts of assets, had the
intellectually elite at the helm, a political climate in their favor and numerous
opportunities to expand. Enron gave all appearances of a vastly superior company that
could do no wrong. The thing about king of the mountain is that the ones on top never
seem to stay there for very long and in Enron’s case the fall from corporate mountain was
spectacular and felt all over the world. Over the course of three short years Enron went
from the seventh largest company in the U.S. to financial ruin. However deep and
impressive their intelligent managerial pool was; internal flaws led to a slide of epic
standards. In our report, we will analyze these internal flaws that include inadequate
control measures, a hostile environment and flawed accounting and financing methods.
Because of the financial severity which the company was in we concluded that Filing
Chapter 11 bankruptcy was the only option for Enron and therefore will be assumed in
our report. When we asked Rich Kidwell if there was anything Enron could have done to
keep from filing Chapter 11 he said “I don’t know if there was anything that they could
do. Enron was like a house of cards and it was only a matter of time before they were
blown down.” We examined different ideas on how to transform these flaws and then
suggest which idea we feel is best suited to the needs of this company.