Word: enronizing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...much of 2001, the partners at Arthur Andersen battled behind closed doors over Enron, a demanding, rule-bending client that paid Andersen more than $50 million a year. At Enron's behest, an Andersen partner considered "too rule oriented" was taken off the account. But the head of the Andersen audit team based inside the Enron building, David Duncan, endured. He was privy to board meetings, conference calls and paper trails as Enron's web of deceit began to unravel--dragging Andersen down too. He's now the government's key witness in its obstruction-of-justice case against...
When Duncan, 43, takes the stand this week in federal court in Houston, he is expected to reveal that he began to worry about Enron much earlier than has been reported. James Benjamin, head of the accounting department at Texas A&M University, told TIME that Duncan, his former student, confided in the summer of 2000 that "he was feeling frustrated with the complexity of the situation and concerned about what Andersen was doing and what was right." Duncan's pastor, Jim Jackson, says the accountant told him he had suggested to colleagues that Andersen should consider dropping Enron...
Instead, last fall Andersen's audit team worked frantically (to no avail) to find legal accounting tricks so that Enron wouldn't have to restate its earnings downward by $591 million and post a $1 billion loss. Prosecutors allege that around the same time, Andersen shredded trunkloads of documents it knew might help the Securities and Exchange Commission investigate Enron's demise...
...Street also dreads a lengthy process to resolve the analyst flap, which, layered on top of the accounting concerns springing from the Enron scandal, is driving investors away. To help regain their confidence, brokerage firms are making a show of efforts to reform. Last week UBS Warburg initiated its coverage of JetBlue Airways--a firm whose IPO it co-managed last month--by advising investors to "reduce" their holdings. It was apparently a pre-emptive move, to show regulators that UBS Warburg is indeed capable of using the word sell...
Pitt came to the job with a goal of regulating through consensus and self-policing, a stark change from his predecessor, Arthur Levitt, who was an outspoken ally of the small investor. In the wake of Enron, Pitt hasn't had a chance to test his style, and the hard-charging Spitzer is now making many wonder if Pitt isn't plain soft. "The SEC under Harvey Pitt has been something of a reluctant regulator," says John Coffee, professor of securities law at Columbia University. Damon Silvers, associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO, which has been carping about analyst...