Enron’s new name

Enrondezvous: Enron Corporation was named “America’s Most Innovative Company” by Fortune magazine for five consecutive years, from 1996 to 2000, and was on the magazine’s list of the “100 Best Companies to Work for in America” in 2000. The next year, Enron was exposed as “the largest corporate failure in history, and became emblematic of institutionalized and well-planned corporate fraud.”

The fraudulent accounting practices that led to this monumental failure were complicated, and the cleverly named energy scams like “Death Star” and “Fat Boy” are still not understood by most people. Even the company’s former CEO, Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Lay claims to have been clueless about the fraudulent goings-on at Enron.

What soon became clear to everyone was that this company was definitiely going to need a new name. In the first quarter of 2002, NPR’s listeners, many of them probably still reeling from the personal financial impact of the collapse of Enron, offered suggestions for a new name including End-Run, Enwrong, and Moron. The people hated Enron. So much, the Houston Astros paid Enron $5 Million to get the damned name off their baseball field.

Two years later, a federal judge has now cleared the way for the Enron corporation to emerge from bankruptcy protection. Its corporate identity will fade into history, but the Enron name will continue on the record in criminal prosecutions and civil litigation, and in the vernacular as a synonym for executive greed and corporate malfeasance. After the sale of most of the assets of Enron in the bankruptcy, the remaining Enron holdings will be managed and operated under the name Prisma Energy International.

It is not known if company executives consulted Houston Astrologers to divine this name, or if they checked a dictionary to see if a prism is really “a medium that distorts, slants, or colors whatever is viewed through it.” It doesn’t matter–as long as it’s not called Enron.

Originally posted by Abnu on our sister site, Wordlab.