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Online Stock Market Trading The Securities and Exchange Commission is stepping up its investigation of the Enron Corporation by questioning the company about its recent disclosure that it may have overstated the value of its assets by up to $24 billion in the last year, according to company executives.

Enron's collapse, the first in a series of financial scandals that rocked Wall Street and corporate America, also embarrassed the White House because of the company's close ties with the Bush administration. Enron, based in Houston, was a big contributor to Mr Bush's presidential election campaign.

Stock Investing Course The S.E.C. appears to be concentrating on how the company valued everything from its trading activities to its hard assets like investments in power plants and fiber optic networks, said these executives, who have been briefed on the investigation.

The charges come after Mr Skilling, 50, surrendered himself to the FBI at their headquarters in Houston, Texas, accompanied by his lawyers. Citing personal reasons, Mr Skilling resigned from Enron in August 2001, four months before the company filed for bankruptcy. His abrupt departure from Enron marked the beginning of the end for the energy company that had won plaudits on Wall Street for its "innovative" financial practices.

Stock Market Game The S.E.C. has been examining Enron's financial reporting over the last few years, when it was led by former executives Kenneth L. Lay, Jeffrey K. Skilling and Andrew S. Fastow.

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Stock Investing Game Enron officials said on April 22 that the company might have to dramatically lower the stated value of its assets, partly because of old "accounting errors." The company also said that its financial statements going back to 1997 could not be relied upon. Those disclosures may open new avenues of investigation and offer new transactions to explore as the S.E.C. seeks to build a case of accounting fraud against the company.

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Journal Prime Rate Street Wall The S.E.C. recently questioned Raymond M. Bowen Jr., the chief financial officer at Enron, about the recent disclosure of the possible correction in the value of Enron's assets, according to several executives. Several other company officials here have also been informed of the inquiry.

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Stock Market News S.E.C. investigators are trying to determine how and when the assets whose stated value is expected to be cut were placed on the balance sheet. Regulators are also looking into whether their value was artificially inflated and what executives were involved in those decisions.

Stock Investing Basics Officials at the S.E.C. could not be reached over the weekend. Mark A. Palmer, a spokesman at Enron, declined to comment on this latest S.E.C. inquiry. But he said the company continues to cooperate with a number of federal investigations.

Stock Investing Software In April, when Enron announced the overstatement of as much as $24 billion, the company did not disclose which assets were involved in that reassessment.

Stock Market Trading The company blamed accounting errors and the effects of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing last December for the decline in value. But the company said that because of doubts about its financial statements going back to 1997, and confusion about what took place in the past year, it would not even attempt to file a financial report for 2001.

Stock Investing For Dummy Last October, the last time Enron filed a quarterly report, it listed assets of about $62 billion. Now, after one of the largest bankruptcies in corporate history, Enron is putting the value of its assets closer to $38 billion and offering further evidence that the way it managed and reported its finances in recent years was questionable or erroneous.

Stock Market Crash Exactly how Enron determined which assets were overstated is unclear. The company cautioned at the time of its disclosure in April that it reached its findings without the participation of an independent auditor. The company also said that it had not contacted former Enron executives or Arthur Andersen officials to ask for explanations about the stated value of some of those assets.

Stock Investing Tip Indeed, Enron has not yet appointed an auditor to replace Arthur Andersen. Andersen is now on trial at a federal court here on a single count of obstruction of justice because of allegations that the firm illegally destroyed Enron-related documents.

Stock Market Chart Enron, which is largely under new management, is now seeking to emerge from bankruptcy protection by attempting to preserve a portion of the company as an old-line energy firm centered on pipelines and power plants. The activities of the current Enron management team, led by Stephen F. Cooper, the interim chief executive and the chief restructuring officer, are not believed to be the target of the S.E.C. investigation. Regulators are focusing on actions that took place before Mr. Cooper was appointed in January.

Online Stock Investing The disclosure in April that Enron expected to greatly reduce the reported value of its assets virtually removes the already slight chances that stockholders whose shares were once worth about $90 each would get anything out of the bankruptcy case. Banks and bondholders secured by Enron property and other creditors have higher priority.

Stock Market Crash Of The S.E.C. began a formal inquiry into Enron and some of its off-balance sheet partnerships back in October. The announcement of that inquiry was one of the first events that precipitated the company's collapse and eventual filing for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 2.

Stock Investing For Beginner Bala Dharan, a professor of management at Rice University who has studied Enron's reports, said the company's third-quarter filing last year raises lots of questions because assets simply labeled "other" represent billions of dollars.

Finance Journal Personal "It's unusual for these types of unlabeled assets going into the billions," he said. "Often it's in the millions. These are things the S.E.C. is going to ask about."

Stock Market Report Mr. Dharan said that $8.5 billion in assets were labeled "other" and that another $19 billion in assets appear to be tied to Enron's trading or risk-management operations.

Finance Investing Stock Market "That's more than one-third of their assets on the balance sheet," he said. "And these could be the most questionable assets because there's a lot of flexibility in determining the value of those assets."

Wall Street Journal Com By David Barboza
New York Times - 5/13/2002

Topic: Enron

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