Reference no: EM132068727

Famous Failures in Finance: Shady Trading at Enron Before it was known for its financial problems, Enron, a utility firm operating pipelines and shipping natural gas, had become famous as a business pioneer, blazing new trails in the market for trading risk. In the 1980s the price of natural gas was deregulated, which meant that its price could go down and up, exposing producers and consumers to risks. Enron decided to exploit new opportunities in the commodities business by trading natural gas futures. The natural gas futures that traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange did not take into account regional discrepancies in gas prices. Enron filled this void by agreeing to deliver natural gas to any location in the United States at any time. In addition to trading natural gas and other energy contracts, in the late 1990s Enron began trading weather derivatives for which no underlying commodities existed. These were just bets on the weather. Its weather-derivatives transactions were worth an estimated $3.5 billion in the United States alone. Thanks to its near-monopoly position in derivatives products, Enron’s trading business was initially highly profitable. At one point, the company offered more than 1,800 different contracts for 16 product categories, ranging from oil and natural gas to weather derivatives, broadband services, and emissions rights, and it earned 90% of its revenues from trading derivatives. And unlike traditional commodity and futures exchanges and brokers, Enron’s online commodity and derivative business was not subject to federal regulations. However, Enron eventually lost its unique position as the energy business started to mature. When other firms entered the online derivatives-trading business, they competed by charging lower commissions and exploiting the same regional price discrepancies that had been Enron’s bread and butter. Enron’s trading operations became less profitable. To find new markets and products, the company expanded into areas such as water, foreign power sources, telecommunications, and broadband services. The farther it moved from its core businesses of supplying gas, the more money Enron lost. The company sought to hide those losses by entering into more risky and bizarre financial contracts. When financial institutions began to realize that Enron was essentially a shell game, they withdrew their credit. At that point, despite rosy assurances from its founder and CEO Ken Lay, Enron went into a death spiral that ended in bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. In July 2004 Lay was indicted on 11 counts of securities fraud and related charges. He was found guilty on May 25, 2006, of all but one of the counts. Each count carried a maximum 5- to 10-year sentence and legal experts said Lay could face 20 to 30 years in prison. However, about three and a half months before his scheduled sentencing, Ken Lay died on July 5, 2006, while vacationing in Snowmass, Colorado. On October 17, 2006, as a result of his death, the federal district court judge who presided over the case vacated Lay’s conviction.

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Critical Thinking Questions: Could the Enron debacle have been prevented? If so, what actions should have been taken by auditors, regulators, and lawmakers? Please respond to the above questions.