“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"
“Get Rich, or Get Fired”. This was the informal motto at Enron, promoting a culture of corruption, not one of integrity. There were a number of compliance themes explored in the movie, including:
Enron CFO Andy Fastow could have been the poster child for conflicts of interest by also being the General Partner of Special Purpose Enterprises (SPEs) that did business with Enron. In fact, Enron’s board of directors had to suspend its code of ethics three times in order to facilitate these trades.
Sherron Watkins was 1/3 of the 2002 Time Magazine “People of the Year”, as the person who “blew the whistle” on these deals that made no economic sense. Her treatment was one reason the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act added whistleblower protection for these courageous reporters.
There was tremendous pressure to make (crush) the numbers because CEO Ken Lay and President Jeff Skilling implemented a 5 category “rank & yank” system. It didn’t matter how they did it but employees earning a “1” on this scale could receive up to a $5,000,000 bonus. “5”s were summarily fired.
For more information about the movie, click here to visit Roger Ebert’s review of the movie. You can also learn more by clicking this wikipedia article.