Angie(Anqi) Tong Auditing
Enron Scandal Summary of Its Use and Abuse of Special Purpose Entities (SPE)
Enron Corporate, an U.S. energy, commodities and services company, spent 16 years to grow from $10 billion assets to $65 billion, but only spent 24 days to go bankrupt. Enron collapsed so quickly and so entirely, making it the largest bankruptcy and well-known accounting scandal in American history
. As Enron’s outside auditor, Arthur A
ndersen LLP
disbanded right after Enron’s
bankruptcy. The largest business scandal and audit failure cost the investors and employees billions of dollars in losses. What happened in Enron? According to the Powers Report,
use and abuse of special purpose entities (SPE) is one of the causes of Enron’s
failure. SPE is defined as a legal entity being set up to separate the company from financial risk. For accounting purpose, company can consider SPE as an independent entity and leave assets and
liabilities of the SPE out of company’s balance
sheet if two conditions are met. Powers has demonstrated the two conditions as following:
“
(1) an owner independent of the company must
make a substantive equity investment of at least 3% of the SPE’s assets
, and that 3% must remain at risk throughout the transaction; and (2) the owner who exercise control of the SPE
must be independent of the company” (Powers, 2002, pp. 5)
. If the two conditions are met, gains
and losses from business with SPE may be recognized on company’s financial statement and the
assets and liabilities of the SPE can be omitted on
company’s balance sheet.
In the case of Enron, SPEs JEDI and Chewco should have been consolidated with Enron
’s
balance sheet since the two accounting non-consolidation conditions are not met. JEDI was started in 1993 and was a joint venture in energy investment of Enron and CalPERS. Chewco
Angie(Anqi) Tong Auditing
Enron Scandal Summary of Its Use and Abuse of Special Purpose Entities (SPE)
Enron Corporate, an U.S. energy, commodities and services company, spent 16 years to grow from $10 billion assets to $65 billion, but only spent 24 days to go bankrupt. Enron collapsed so quickly and so entirely, making it the largest bankruptcy and well-known accounting scandal in American history
. As Enron’s outside auditor, Arthur A
ndersen LLP
disbanded right after Enron’s
bankruptcy. The largest business scandal and audit failure cost the investors and employees billions of dollars in losses. What happened in Enron? According to the Powers Report,
use and abuse of special purpose entities (SPE) is one of the causes of Enron’s
failure. SPE is defined as a legal entity being set up to separate the company from financial risk. For accounting purpose, company can consider SPE as an independent entity and leave assets and
liabilities of the SPE out of company’s balance
sheet if two conditions are met. Powers has demonstrated the two conditions as following:
“
(1) an owner independent of the company must
make a substantive equity investment of at least 3% of the SPE’s assets
, and that 3% must remain at risk throughout the transaction; and (2) the owner who exercise control of the SPE
must be independent of the company” (Powers, 2002, pp. 5)
. If the two conditions are met, gains
and losses from business with SPE may be recognized on company’s financial statement and the
assets and liabilities of the SPE can be omitted on
company’s balance sheet.
In the case of Enron, SPEs JEDI and Chewco should have been consolidated with Enron
’s
balance sheet since the two accounting non-consolidation conditions are not met. JEDI was started in 1993 and was a joint venture in energy investment of Enron and CalPERS. Chewco
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