The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron: Finance, Credit, Economics, Wall Street Analysts (2003)

• Report rights infringement
• published: 18 May 2016
• views: 121

Sherron Watkins (born August 28, 1959) was Vice President of Corporate Development at the Enron Corporation. Watkins testified about her role in the Enron fraud before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate at the beginning of 2002. In August 2001, Watkins alerted then-Enron CEO Kenneth Lay of accounting irregularities in financial reports. However, Watkins has been criticized for not reporting the fraud to government authorities and not speaking up publicly sooner about her concerns, as her memo did not reach the public until five months after it was written.[1] Ms. Watkins was represented by Houston attorney Philip H. Hilder. Watkins was selected as one of three "Persons of the Year 2002" by Time. (The two other whistleblowers who joined her as "People of the Year" were Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Coleen Rowley of the FBI.) Watkins was born in Tomball, Texas. Watkins holds a Bachelor of Business Administration (with honors) from the University of Texas, where she was a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority,[2] and a Masters of Professional Accounting, also from the McCombs School of Business. Watkins is a Certified Public Accountant. Watkins began her career in 1982 at Arthur Andersen as an auditor. She spent 8 years at Andersen in both the Houston and New York offices. She joined New York-based MG Trade Finance in 1990 to manage their portfolio of commodity-backed finance assets until October 1993. She joined Enron in 1993. She departed from Enron in November 2002. Since then, Watkins has been giving speeches at colleges and management congresses. In 2004, she released a book about her experiences at Enron and the problems of US corporate culture, Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. 2005. IMDB Includes personal interviews with Sherron Watkins. The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron. 2003. Portrayed as a staff accountant who nervously alerts Lay of the misstatements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherron_Watkins Kenneth Lee "Ken" Lay (April 15, 1942 – July 5, 2006) was an American businessman. He played a leading role in the corruption scandal that led to the downfall of Enron Corporation. Lay and Enron became synonymous with corporate abuse and accounting fraud when the scandal broke in 2001. Lay was the CEO and chairman of Enron from 1985 until his resignation on January 23, 2002, except for a few months in 2000 when he was chairman and Jeffrey Skilling was chief executive officer (CEO). On July 7, 2004, Lay was indicted by a grand jury on 11 counts of securities fraud and related charges.[4] On January 31, 2006, following four and a half years of preparation by government prosecutors, Lay's and Skilling's trial began in Houston. Lay was found guilty on May 25, 2006, of 10 counts against him; the judge dismissed the 11th. Because each count carried a maximum 5- to 10-year sentence, legal experts said Lay could have faced 20 to 30 years in prison.[5] However, he died while vacationing in Snowmass, Colorado, on July 5, 2006, about three and a half months before his scheduled October 23 sentencing.[6] Preliminary autopsy reports state that he died of a heart attack caused by coronary artery disease. As a result of his death, on October 17, 2006, the federal district court judge who presided over the case vacated Lay's conviction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron is an American television movie aired by CBS in January 2003, which was based on the book Anatomy of Greed by Brian Cruver.[1] The film, which stars Brian Dennehy, Christian Kane and Mike Farrell, and was directed by Penelope Spheeris, was a ratings hit for the network.[2][3] The author of the book and ex-Enron employee says that the strippers hired as secretaries have more exposure in the film than they did in his book and that the employee rallies were more dramatic in real life than in the film, but for the most part, the TV movie gets it right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crooked_E:_The_Unshredded_Truth_About_Enron Image By Abe Atri from Mexico D.F. (MARGARITA N.1 Uploaded by Vydra) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons