The end game

Enron, which was once the biggest energy trader in the United States, was the first company that realized that they could buy, sell and hedge their products just as shares and bonds. The greed of the owners forced the executives to make extremely complicated transactions relating to unsure deals full of risk that would take place many years later. In time these speculations turned into huge losses. The company tried to hide these debts by keeping them off the balance sheet. When the ugly truth was revealed, the company‘s executives had already sold their shares before its stock price collapsed. The gambling scandal on the future uncertainties left Enron with a vast number of debts and an enormous quantity of unemployed people.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3398913.stm

Stijn Casneuf