- Title: USA: NEW DOCUMENTARY "ENRON" PROFILES THE COLLAPSE OF THE ENERGY COMPANY ENRON.
- Date: 21st April 2005
- Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT)(REUTERS) SCU: (SOUNDBITE) (English) DOCUMENTARY DIRECTOR ALEX GIBNEY SAYING: "Enron is the big Kahuna, it's almost the poster boy for corporate scandal in the late 90s. And I think what's interesting about Enron, though, at the end of the day, is that I don't think Enron started out as a scam. I think Enron started out as a
- Embargoed: 6th May 2005 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
- Country: USA
- Topics: Entertainment
- Reuters ID: LVAF29FOMMWPL0OB96UC0KI2JN1U
- Story Text: A new documentary profiles the collapse of a
high-profile energy company called Enron. It is the
largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history.
A new documentary, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the
Room" profiles the story of an energy company whose name is
now synonymous for being one of the greatest financial
disasters in corporate history. Enron was once the seventh
largest company in the United States. Founded in 1985, it
all came crashing down at the end of 2001. By that time
the top executives had walked away with more than one
billion dollars, leaving investors and employees with nothing.
Based on the best-selling book of the same name by
Fortune Magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind,
the film features interviews with former Enron employees
and rare corporate audio and video tapes that reveal the
outrageous personal and professional excesses, as well as
an utter disregard for professional ethics that posed as
corporate philosophy.
At the center of the scandal were company founder and
chairman of the board, Kenneth L. Lay, and CEO, Jeffrey K.
Skilling. According to documentary director Alex Gibney,
Lay hired Skilling because he felt the former financial
consultant could help carve out a new, larger-than-life
identity for his low-key energy enterprise.
"I think what drove the relationship was that Ken Lay
saw in Jeff Skilling a money-maker, he saw him as a man who
had ideas, who was going to transform Enron from a sleepy
pipeline company into something much more dynamic, much
bigger, and that Ken Lay had a kind of hunger, not only for
money, but also for the grand stage, he wanted to be part
of a company that had a kind of new vision," says Gibney.
"And he saw Jeff Skilling as the man to get him there."
But Gibney found that Enron was destined to fail when
it adopted a corporate philosophy that dictated the ends
would justify the means. He says the key to pursuing a
goal of increasing profits at all costs rested in one
strategy: Enron executives "just made stuff up." Gibney
says that for this reason, he felt like he was working on a
science fiction movie, not a documentary based on actual events.
Lay was the born poor son of a Baptist minister who
later earned a PhD in economics. And Gibney says he was a
man so determined to recreate himself, that he had
absolutely no regard for the outcome of his decisions.
"I've never met the man. But I will say I think, when
it comes to Lay, he is almost a dark shadow of the American
dream. This is a guy who was on a tractor as a young man,
and I think he vowed to himself then, he was never going to
go back to that, that he was going to make something of himself."
It took Enron 16 years to go from 10 billion U.S.
dollars in assets to 65 billion dollars in assets. But it
took less than a month for the energy trading company to go
bankrupt. Enron filed for Chapter 11 on December 2, 2001.
Those who watched it happen say the recipe for this
disaster included introducing liberal portions of
arrogance, intolerance and greed into the mix.
The crash of Enron turned into the largest corporate
bankruptcy in the United States. 20,000 people lost their
jobs when this house of cards fell. However, Gibner
believes the missteps were initially more the result of the
delusional state of those in charge rather than any
intentional exercises in deceit.
"Enron is the big Kahuna, it's almost the poster boy
for corporate scandal in the late 90s. And I think what's
interesting about Enron, though, at the end of the day, is
that I don't think Enron started out as a scam. I think
Enron started out as a few people who thought they were
reinventing the energy industry, and really believed in
that. But along the way, they got caught."
Not surprisingly, Gibner says those involved at all
levels were blinded by the huge amounts of money to be
pocketed. (Kenneth Lay, for example, earned 300 million U.S. dollars
in compensation in four years.) He says it
demonstrates how "ordinary people can do extraordinarily
evil or immoral things" and that "the people at Enron are
not so different from you and me." Further, Gibner says
the attitude of Lay and Skilling illustrates the
problematic nature of "the moral climate in this country"
and says it is something we need to look at carefully.
"I don't think Skilling and Lay have absorbed it. I
mean I think Skilling and Lay, as you see in the film, if I
were to interview them today, or you were to interview them
today, they would say exactly what they say in the film.
They seem to be unrepentant, and utterly oblivious that
they did anything wrong whatsoever."
Skilling faces more than 30 counts of fraud,
conspiracy, insider trading, lying to auditors and more for
allegedly participating in a scheme to fool investors into
believing Enron was financially stable. And Lay has been
charged with 11 counts -- seven relating to the wider Enron
case and four stemming from his personal banking. The
fraud and conspiracy trial for Lay and Skilling has been
set for January 17, 2006.
The documentary will be released in New York and
Houston (where Enron was based) on April 22nd and in Los
Angeles on April 29th. A national release will follow. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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