ENRON Documentary (1 Viewer)

[blue_chameleon]

Enron: The Smartest guys in the room is the one that I have read, It is also a DVD.

Yeah, thats the one. I watched the dvd of it. They also brought down Arthur Anderson which was a huge multinational accounting firm who worked for them. A lot of people lost their jobs, and their life savings. Amazing how a simple change in accounting principles started the ball rolling...

 

[blue_chameleon]

I didnt really know a great deal about ENRON, or its massive collapse, until I hired out a doco on it from the video shop last night. It really opened my eyes to what can happen. I mean, id heard about HIH, One Tel.....those sort of collapses, but this was massive. Andy Fastow, Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling these guys were pretty smart. Rolling blackouts causing power shortages, the creation of LJM, the building of power plants in India...which was a massive failure.
I remeber seeing that their share price at one stage was above US$90/share, and at its collapse, it was US$0.90/share.
It gave an insight into the behind the scenes story, the cocky traders, the bush administration.
It was a good watch.
Does anybody know of any other doco's that might be out there? There are probably countless books on it im sure. The DVD I watched was just titled "ENRON".

 

[seremify007]

I didn't even know there was a documentary on it... but I might watch it just out of interest to learn more about the industry (auditing/accounting).

 

[0Jade0]

Enron: The Smartest guys in the room is the one that I have read, It is also a DVD.

 

[Emily.]

Back when andersen was in the game it used to be the Big 5

Now we're just the Big 4

 

[seremify007]

There was also Big 6 at one stage wasn't it (prior to the PW/C&L merger).

 

[Tulipa]

There's a lot of good books on it actually. It wasn't really looked at too much here considering it didn't really affect anyone but the Australian Anderson office. I can't remember the name of it at the moment but I'll remember later but there's one brilliant book on it by one of the major financial journalists in the states. I'll edit this when I remember the name of it.

 

[sunjet]

I watched it, imo they thought they were smart enough to get away with their mark to mark accounting, which ultimately failed. honestly though, market for weather?

Good video though overall, as a first year commerce student majoring in acct/fins was interesting.

 

[blue_chameleon]

...honestly though, market for weather?

Haha yeah I couldnt stop laughing when I heard about that.
When asked by a lecturer when he was at university, whether he was smart.....Jeff Skilling replies "im fucking smart".

 

[sunjet]

hahaha yeah, what i wonder is, how did they get that accounting method passed?

 

[blue_chameleon]

Hired call girls, to secks the people they needed to influence? Other than that I have no idea. The whole mark to mark accounting method was ridiculous anyway. Who would be stupid enough to allow a company to release financial statements based upon what it thinks future earnings could be?

Hahaha, and when stock prices were plummeting, enron setup a meeting for stockholders of the company. When stock prices were plummeting.......and Jeff Skilling copped a pie to the face. Haha.

 

[Emily.]

well it definitely wasnt legal, thats why andersen went down too, cos they turned a blind eye and signed off an audit report on it!

 

[blue_chameleon]

...they turned a blind eye and signed off an audit report on it!

Mmmmm greed. Money money money.

 

[Minai]

I remember when ENRON was in the cinemas last year..my auditing lecturer announced that the UNSW school of accounting went on an "excursion" to watch the Enron movie at Bondi Jct...the whole lecture theatre erupted with laughter!

Can you hire it at video ezy etc?

 

[sunjet]

yeah.. it's out on DVD now, i wonder what a michael moore version would be like

 

[seremify007]

I remember when ENRON was in the cinemas last year..my auditing lecturer announced that the UNSW school of accounting went on an "excursion" to watch the Enron movie at Bondi Jct...the whole lecture theatre erupted with laughter!

Woah I didn't know unis had "excursions" as such.

 

[ND]

honestly though, market for weather?
/QUOTE]

Uhh weather derivative markets do exist.

 

[redruM]

I've got a hold of the documentary. Will check it out soon.

 

[blue_chameleon]

yeah.. it's out on DVD now, i wonder what a michael moore version would be like

Biased.

 

[humphreybear]

well it definitely wasnt legal, thats why andersen went down too, cos they turned a blind eye and signed off an audit report on it!

Nah Andersen went down because it was convicted of obstruction of justice (now overturned) for the document shredding and had to surrender its practicing licences to the SEC. even though the conviction has been overturned, practically all of its clients had deserted it and its international network disintergrated.

Technically, Andersen has been found to have done nothing wrong (so far) despite being insanely incompetent and conflicted (and arguably unethical or criminal). The document shredding was in line with its document retention policy and I believe it was meant to comply with privacy requirements for its clients.

Andersen still operates but it has about 200 staff now and they mainly deal with lawsuits.

a sad sad day for the accounting profession