Enron scandal

Unfair treatment of minority shareholders in family companies and other closely related held corporations by persons in control of those corporations is so widespread that it had become a national business scandal. The amount of litigation growing out of oppression of minority shareholder (fancied, actual or fabricated) has shown growth tremendously in recent few years, and the flood of litigation shows no sign of putting an end to this nuisance. Minority shareholders often are deprived of any…

Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) was the world’s leading provider of speech and language technology products, solutions, and services to businesses worldwide. Both Microsoft and Intel invested millions in L&H. however, accounting scandals and fraud allegations sent the company’s stock crashing, and forced the firm to seek bankruptcy protection in Belgium and in the US. Selected information was gathered concerning L&H operations: • Consolidated revenue increased 184% from 1997 fiscal year to 1998 fiscal…

White-collar crime is a widespread problem which have resulted in significant financial loss to victims. A few well-known white-collar crime case made headline to aware of the seriousness. They are Enron collapse in 2001, WorldCom financial fraud in 2002, Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme in 2008 and Leman Brothers scandal in 2008. These frauds all linked to large amount of money. According to Friedrichs (2009), the financial damage result from white-collar crime in the United States with an estimate…

Standard Oil Company was established in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller in Ohio (Exxon). Not too long after, in 1879 Standard bought three-quarters of Vacuum Oil company, which later became Mobil (Exxon). Three years later in 1882, Rockefeller formed Standard Oil into a trust which included the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, which later became Exxon, as well as Vacuum, and many others (Exxon). However, following a Supreme Court decision the company was split into 34 unrelated businesses in 1911…

The wealth and Poverty of nations is a book that covers almost six centuries of long economic analysis of dozen of countries. The book has been written in a progression in economics throughout history. The main idea he believes the Western Nations became such wealthy nations because of political, economic institutions but most important social and culture. David S. Landes explains in the book by asking the big question, “why are some nations wealthily and other some nations poor? He explains…

Buffalo Creek Disaster Rough Draft The buffalo creek disaster is one of the worst coal mining incidents in the history of the united states. The Book Buffalo Creek disaster written by Gerald Stern is an expose on the wrongdoings of the NewYork based Pittston company but also a summation of the events leading to the 13.5-million-dollar settlement awarded to the victims. The book also serves the purpose of a basic depiction of how the court systems in America work. Gerald Stern served as a…

A CEO took power too far that lead to himself behind bars. Dennis Kozlowski, CEO of Tyco International, and Mark Belnick, former general counselor, were both charged with more than 30 accounts of misconduct. Power lead Dennis to an unethical decision when it came to stealing money from his company and because of his actions, he was arrested and charged with millions of dollars’ worth of fines. Abusing power to benefit yourself only leads to consequences. Company Background . Johnson Controls is…

Entrepreneur Dana Severson spent a week in tears after failure of his crowdfunding startup: Wahooly. The tears led him to an idea that has proven more successful than Wahooly. Severson launched Startups Anonymous, now a popular site for founders’ anonymous gripes, worries and stresses and since January, it has gathered more than 700 confessions, questions and stories (Financial Times). Well emotional factors depend on the individual personality of entrepreneur but some of them broke at failure…

Wells Fargo was caught in a scandal where employees would create fake emails and secretly issue credit cards without the customer’s consent. Employees opened more than 1 million bank accounts and issued more than half a million credit cards. As a result Wells Fargo fired the suspected employees for opening accounts without authorization of the customer. This led to employees to file “A class action in California seeking $2.6 billion or more for workers who tried to meet aggressive sales quotas…

According the Alex Gibney’s movie, I would say that I believe in the correctness of Joel Bakan’s arguments. Enron Company shows “psychopathic” traits that provide effect to their employees and other people lives. The actions involve immoral actions, shadow business and money manipulations that destroy people careers. Joe Bakan gave clear view that what Enron did was planned. Moreover, Enron took a risk that could make a huge profit, however; was over their opportunity. In my opinion,…