Sunday, January 13, 2008
It's just business
I know I should be concentrating on my coursework but I can't help it but to focus my interest and curiousity on the scandal we watched last Friday, The Smartest Guys in the Room, about the Enron Corporation which led to one of the most biggest and most complex bankruptcies in US history. Every time I get to watch such documentaries, I find myself getting more and more interested in corporate culture.
Before its bankruptcy, Enron employed around 22,000 people and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, pulp and paper, and communications companies, with claimed revenues of $111 billion in 2000. Enron traded in more than 30 different products including petrochemicals, plastics, power, pulp and paper, steel, weather risk management, oil, broadband, principal investments, risk management for commodities, shipping/freight, streaming media, water & wastewater, and computer chips.
I went researching for information on the trial of the financial scandal. And it was then I realised the downfall of one of the Big 5 international accountancy and professional auditing firms in the world, Arthur Andersen, after they were indicted for obstruction of justice for shredding documents relating to the audit in the 2001 Enron scandal. I went to identify the remaining top 4 auditors by their mergers - PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young, and KPMG.
This done, I got back to the subject and read about the charges convicted against the persons responsible for the scandal. There are so many types of financial crimes, including accounting fraud, bank fraud, making false statements to banks and auditors, securities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and insider trading.
In conclusion, I find myself so ignorant about the things that happen around me. That said, I believe I should be getting back to reading Nozick. But philosophy bores me. *starts digging articles on corporate governance*
Note: Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws and institutions affecting the way a corporation is directed, administered or controlled.
Before its bankruptcy, Enron employed around 22,000 people and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, pulp and paper, and communications companies, with claimed revenues of $111 billion in 2000. Enron traded in more than 30 different products including petrochemicals, plastics, power, pulp and paper, steel, weather risk management, oil, broadband, principal investments, risk management for commodities, shipping/freight, streaming media, water & wastewater, and computer chips.
I went researching for information on the trial of the financial scandal. And it was then I realised the downfall of one of the Big 5 international accountancy and professional auditing firms in the world, Arthur Andersen, after they were indicted for obstruction of justice for shredding documents relating to the audit in the 2001 Enron scandal. I went to identify the remaining top 4 auditors by their mergers - PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young, and KPMG.
This done, I got back to the subject and read about the charges convicted against the persons responsible for the scandal. There are so many types of financial crimes, including accounting fraud, bank fraud, making false statements to banks and auditors, securities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and insider trading.
In conclusion, I find myself so ignorant about the things that happen around me. That said, I believe I should be getting back to reading Nozick. But philosophy bores me. *starts digging articles on corporate governance*
Note: Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws and institutions affecting the way a corporation is directed, administered or controlled.
