what happened to enron
the enron bankruptcy at 63 4 billion in assets was the largest on record at the time the company s collapse shook the financial markets and nearly crippled the energy industry while high level executives at the company concocted the fraudulent accounting schemes financial and legal experts maintained that they would never have gotten away with it without outside assistance the securities and exchange commission sec credit rating agencies and investment banks were all accused of having a role in enabling enron s fraud initially much of the finger pointing was directed at the sec which the u s senate found complicit for its systemic and catastrophic failure of oversight the senate s investigation determined that had the sec reviewed any of enron s post 1997 annual reports it would have seen the red flags and possibly prevented the enormous losses suffered by employees and investors the credit rating agencies were found to be equally complicit in their failure to conduct proper due diligence before issuing an investment grade rating on enron s bonds just before its bankruptcy filing meanwhile the investment banks through manipulation or outright deception had helped enron receive positive reports from stock analysts which promoted its shares and brought billions of dollars of investment into the company it was a quid pro quo in which enron paid the investment banks millions of dollars for their services in return for their backing enron reported total company revenue of 