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Subject: Enron

Enron Corporation (former NYSE ticker symbol ENE) was an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy in late 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 and was one of the world’s leading electricity, natural gas, pulp and paper, and communications companies, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion in 2000. Fortune named Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years. At the end of 2001 it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained substantially by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known as the “Enron scandal”. Enron has since become a popular symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption. The scandal also brought into question the accounting practices of many corporations throughout the United States and was a factor in the creation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
Enron filed for bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of New York in late 2001 and selected Weil, Gotshal & Manges as its bankruptcy counsel. It emerged from bankruptcy in November 2004 after one of the biggest and most complex bankruptcy cases in U.S. history. On September 7, 2006, Enron sold Prisma Energy International Inc., its last remaining business, to Ashmore Energy International Ltd. Following the scandal, lawsuits against Enron’s directors were notable because the directors settled the suits by paying very significant sums of money personally. The scandal also caused the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, affecting the wider business world.
In November 2004, Enron Corp. emerged from bankruptcy pursuant to a Bankruptcy Court approved plan of reorganization. The new board of directors decided to change the name of Enron to Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., and has focused on a sole mission: to reorganize and liquidate certain operations and assets of the “pre-bankruptcy” Enron for the benefit of its creditors. (Wikipedia Jan 2010)

Post Modern Security Analysis

The heroic, solitary analyst is long gone

The solitary, heroic security analyst is long gone ...

The old-fashioned, heroic security analyst, working alone in a dark room with a stack of annual reports, in a snow-bound house in Omaha, far from Wall Street, is less likely to solve investment riddles today, than fifty years ago.

The analyst of the 21st century must be ready to engage in collaborative research. The future lies in modern knowledge handling technology, including OSINT techniques, crowdsourcing, wiki software, and capital market taxonomy.

Stock repurchases

Buyback bear rages: the worst is yet to come

The Buyback Bear Rages

On September 17, 2007, Capital Flow Watch called the top of the Buyback Bubble, issuing a warning that stock prices might be in for a sharp fall. Throughout the last quarter of 2007, stock prices fell as funding for buybacks began to dry up, while executives rushed to exercise stock options before they were ‘under water’.

Equity sales by households are expected to continue, until executive options are ‘under water’ or until corporations run out of funding for stock buybacks, whichever is first.

The top of the market

Track buybacks with ‘Google Alerts’

Google has useful tools

Google has come out with a new service called Google Alerts that is a great tool for tracking the madness of the US equity market. Sign up and enter the words ’stock buybacks’ and each day your email will bring proof of the lack of market rationality. Googling for ’stock buybacks’ now brings information that suggests that the ‘Buyback Era’ may be drawing to an end.

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Featured articles on inside pages

Stock buybacks

The Stock Buyback Era evaluated

The buyback era began when the SEC allowed issuers to manipulate prices to give value to executive options. Stock buybacks since 1982, in 2008 dollars, total $5.77 trillion. More ...

Securities Analysis

Managing complexity

Modern capital markets have become so complex that security analysis methods of the 1930s are no longer adequate. Complexity goes beyond financial data to collateral issues such as operations, foreign and domestic taxation, and structural risks. More ...

US Politics

America grows with legal immigration

Legal immigration has resulted in solid growth of the US population, despite declining birth rates and an increasing number of old people. This is good news for investors in stocks and real estate. Illegal immigration appears to be less than 5% of legal immigration, and legal immigration is at an all time high.
More ...

US equities

GAO favors overly-optimistic projections

In a study of the effect of the retirement of Baby Boomers on the price of equities, the GAO assumed that equities will provide real returns of 7% over the next decades. This figure is often cited in Wall Street promotional literature, but has no scientific basis.
More ...

US Bonds

Bond demand exceeds supply for a decade

Over the decade, 1995-2004, the demand for US bonds of all types has surpassed new bond issues in eight of the last ten years. This is the reason that bond prices have held firm, even in 2003, when net new issues reached almost $1.8 trillion. More ...

World Economy

Working off the US trade deficit

Foreigners hold $16.8 trillion in US financial assets as a result of selling more goods to Americans than they buy from them. Since the 'deficit' is in dollars, the US has no problem in 'paying it off'. More ...

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Stock Quotes

DJIA11283.10  chart -0.65%
NASDAQ2555.52  chart -0.90%
S&P 5001213.54  chart -0.42%

Ftse 1005815.23  chart -0.03%
Dax6723.41  chart +0.05%
Cac 403867.35  chart -0.54%

Nikkei 2259861.46  chart +0.00%
Hang Seng Index24700.30  chart +0.00%
Straits Times Ind3293.39  chart +0.13%

Eur To Usd1.37  chartN/A
Usd To Jpy82.50  chartN/A
Gbp To Usd1.61  chartN/A

2010-11-11 16:03