What's Up With Enron?

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In early 2001, Enron discloses an entity managed by a member of the management team that does deals with Enron. It's like one sentence. And then when the shit really hits the fan, they say, oh, well, a previously disclosed entity did deals this quarter, but that's been previously disclosed. There ends up being like a billion dollar loss or some crazy, don't quote me on that, but some massive, massive loss.

The FTX fraud has dominated headlines now for weeks, during which we’ve debated if and how Acquired could uniquely add to the conversation. Then we realized there was an angle so perfect that we had to drop everything and enter Acquired research overdrive: Enron. Travel back with us to the granddaddy fraud of them all, 2001’s then-largest bankruptcy in US history and the impetus for the famous Sarbanes-Oxley Act. So much of Enron’s history parallels FTX that the uncanniness is almost unbelievable — right down to the same CEO running the two bankruptcies. Sit back and enjoy this crazy tale of villainy, greed, and the nature of humans and money. Maybe just don’t take notes on this one…

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