Enron Corporation
Enron logo
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| Public | |
| Traded as | : ENE |
| Industry | Energy |
| Fate | Bankruptcy |
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| Successor | |
| Founded | 1985 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States |
| Founder | Kenneth Lay |
| Defunct | 2007 |
| Headquarters |
1400 Smith Street Houston, Texas, United States |
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Key people
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Number of employees
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20,600 (2001) |
| Website | www |
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded in 1985 as the result of a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies in the U.S. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 20,000 staff and was one of the world's major electricity, natural gas, communications and pulp and paper companies, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000.Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years.
At the end of 2001, it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known since as the Enron scandal. Enron has since become a well-known example of willful corporate fraud and corruption. The scandal also brought into question the accounting practices and activities of many corporations in the United States and was a factor in the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. The scandal also affected the greater business world by causing the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm.
Enron filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York in late 2001 and selected Weil, Gotshal & Manges as its bankruptcy counsel. It ended its bankruptcy during November 2004, pursuant to a court-approved plan of reorganization, n Creditors Recovery Corp., and emphasized reorganizing and liquidating certain operations and assets of the pre-bankruptcy Enron. On September 7, 2006, Enron sold Prisma Energy International Inc., its last remaining business, to Ashmore Energy International Ltd. (now AEI).
One of Enron's primary predecessors was the Northern Natural Gas Company, which was formed in 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska just a few months after Black Tuesday. The low cost of natural gas and cheap labor supply during the Great Depression helped to fuel the company's early beginnings. The company doubled in size by 1932 and was able to bring the first natural gas to Minnesota. Over the next 50 years, Northern expanded even more as it acquired many energy companies and created new divisions within. It was reorganized in 1979 as the main subsidiary of a holding company, InterNorth, which was a diversified energy and energy-related products company. Although most of the acquisitions conducted were successful, some ended poorly. InterNorth competed with Cooper Industries over a hostile takeover of Crouse-Hinds Company, who manufactured electrical products. InterNorth was ultimately unsuccessful as Cooper bought out Crouse-Hinds. Cooper and InterNorth feuded over numerous suits over the course of the takeover that were eventually settled after the transaction was completed. The subsidiary Northern Natural Gas operated the largest natural gas pipeline company in North America. By the 1980s, InterNorth became a major force for natural gas production, transmission and marketing as well as for natural gas liquids, and was an innovator in the plastics industry.
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