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| Enron logo, designed by Paul Rand | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Energy |
| Founded | Omaha, Nebraska, 1985 |
| Headquarters | Houston, Texas, U.S. |
| Key people | Kenneth Lay, Founder Stephen F. Cooper, Interim CEO and CRO John J. Ray, III, Chairman |
| Revenue | 100,789,000,000 United States dollar (2000)  |
| Net income | 979,000,000 United States dollar (2000) |
| Total assets | 65,503,000,000 United States dollar (2000) |
| Number of employees | 9,500 as of 2006 (including Prisma and PGE subsidiaries) |
| Website | www.enron.com/corp |
Enron Corporation is an energy company based in Houston, Texas. Prior to its bankruptcy in late 2001, Enron employed around 21,000 people and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, and communications companies, with claimed revenues of $101 billion in 2000. Fortune magazine named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years. It became most famous at the end of 2001, when it was revealed that it was sustained mostly by institutionalized, systematic, and well-planned accounting fraud. Its European operations filed for bankruptcy on November 30, 2001, and it sought Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. two days later, on December 2. At the time, it was the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, and it cost 4,000 employees their jobs .
The company still exists, operating a handful of key assets, and making preparations for the sale or spin-off of remaining businesses. Enron emerged from bankruptcy in November of 2004 after one of the biggest and most complex cases in US history. It has since entered the zeitgeist as a symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption.
Growth
Enron, founded in 1930 as Northern Natural Gas Company, was a consortium of Northern American Power and Light Company, Lone Star Gas Company, and United Lights and Railways Corporation. The consortium ownership was gradually dissolved between 1941 and 1947 through a public stock offering. In 1979, Northern Natural Gas was restructured under the ownership of a new holding company, InterNorth Inc., which replaced Northern Natural Gas on the New York Stock Exchange.
In 1985, InterNorth acquired competitor Houston Natural Gas Company in a transaction engineered by HNG CEO Kenneth Lay. Although InterNorth was the purchaser, Lay emerged as CEO and promptly renamed InterNorth as Enron Corporation, with headquarters in Houston rather than InterNorth/Northern Natural Gas's base in Omaha. Initially, the company was to be named Enterone, chosen for the positive connotations of "enter" and "one", but when it was pointed out that the term approximated a word referring to the intestine, it was quickly shortened to "Enron."
Bianca Gordon
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