Enron was created in 1985 by the merger of two gas pipeline companies : Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth. Enron’ s mission as to become the leading natural gas pipeline company in North America
As it adapted to changes in the natural gas industry, enron changed its mission, expanding into natural gas trading and financing and into other markets, such as electricity and other commodity markets In the process, Enron made significant changes to several of its accounting procedures
For example, Enron began using mark-to-market (MTM) accounting for its trading business
Financial services industry typically used MTM to value their trading portfolios. That is, every day they adjusted the values of their portfolios according to their current values in the market. Enron was the first company outside the financial services industry to use MTM accounting.