The Smartest Guys In The Room Analysis

The Smartest Guys in the Room The film The Smartest Guys in the Room was based of the book with the same tile by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. This documentary showed how the infamous collapse of Enron happened. Enron was an American energy company that was named by fortune magazine the most admired corporation” for six straight years. However, Enron is now known for the largest scandal in corporate America. The bankruptcy lead to criminal charges against Enron’s top executives. In 1987, two years after the company was established, Enron experienced its first crisis where they were on the brink of bankruptcy due to traders making bets on the oil markets. Also Louis Borget, one of the traders was also caught shuffling money into off shore accounts Kenneth Lay, the CEO, was informed by auditors about the wrong doings that was going on but he encouraged them to keep bringing in the money. The traders were fired after gambling away almost all of Enron’s money. Jeffrey Skilling was brought in by Lay under the conditions that Market

Arthur Levitt, former chairman of SEC, stated “I think the Enron scandal is symptomatic of something much broader than Enron. I think it's symptomatic of a breakdown of the ethical values of business over a period of perhaps 20 years, a gradual erosion of business ethics that brought us to an Enron, but might very well bring us to a whole host of Enrons as we move down the road.” This does seem to be a much larger problem then the collapse itself. Their unethical ways cost Americans millions of dollars, and some their life savings. At first it seemed as though the Kenneth Lay let his pride get in the way of admitting his company was going down but the further you get into the details it was all about the money. With their way of doing Market to market account it made them look as though they were making money when in fact they were