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THE FALL OF ENRON: HOW COULD IT HAVE

HAPPENED?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JANUARY 24, 2002

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

MAX CLELAND, Georgia

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware

JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota

FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee

TED STEVENS, Alaska

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah

JIM BUNNING, Kentucky

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Staff Director and Counsel

CYNTHIA GOOEN LESSER, Counsel

DAVID M. BERICK, Professional Staff Member

HANNAH S. SISTARE, Minority Staff Director and Counsel

WILLIAM M. OUTHIER, Minority Investigative Counsel

DARLA D. CASSELL, Chief Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Opening statement: Page

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 1

Senator Thompson ............................................................................................ 4

Senator Levin .................................................................................................... 6

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 9

Senator Durbin ................................................................................................. 11

Senator Cochran ............................................................................................... 12

Senator Torricelli .............................................................................................. 12

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 14

Senator Cleland ................................................................................................ 16

Senator Bennett ................................................................................................ 18

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 19

Senator Bunning ............................................................................................... 20

Senator Carnahan ............................................................................................ 21

Senator Dayton ................................................................................................. 23

WITNESSES

THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2002

Hon. Arthur Levitt, Jr., former Chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange

Commission ........................................................................................................... 26

Lynn E. Turner, former Chief Accountant, U.S. Securities and Exchange

Commission ........................................................................................................... 29

Bruce B. Henning, Director, Regulatory and Market Analysis, Energy and

Environmental Analysis, Inc. .............................................................................. 54

John H. Langbein, Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History, Yale Law

School .................................................................................................................... 56

Frank Partnoy, Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law ........ 58

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Henning, Bruce B.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 54

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 84

Langbein, John H.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 56

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 93

Levitt, Hon. Arthur Jr.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 26

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 75

Partnoy, Frank:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 58

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 103

Turner, Lynn E.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 29

Prepared statement with an attachment ....................................................... 78

APPENDIX

Chart entitled ‘‘Market Losses to Investors After Corporate Restatements’’

(submitted by Senator Torricelli) ........................................................................ 135

Chart entitled ‘‘Corporate Restatements Have Increased Dramatically in the

Last Three Years’’ (submitted by Senator Torricelli) ........................................ 136

Chart entitled ‘‘Corporate Overstatements in the Past Decade’’ (submitted

by Senator Torricelli) ........................................................................................... 137

Page

IV

Questions for the Record with responses from:

Mr. Levitt .......................................................................................................... 138

Mr. Langbein .................................................................................................... 142

Mr. Partnoy ....................................................................................................... 150

(1)

THE FALL OF ENRON: HOW COULD IT HAVE

HAPPENED?

THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2002

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC.

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in room

SH–216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman,

Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

Present: Senators Lieberman, Thompson, Levin, Collins, Durbin,

Cochran, Torricelli, Cleland, Carper, Carnahan, Dayton, Voinovich,

Bennett, and Bunning.

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN

Chairman LIEBERMAN. This hearing will come to order.

Good morning. With this hearing, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee begins its investigation of the Enron scandal, the

spectacular rise and fall of an American corporation and the devastating effects its collapse has had on its employees and retirees,

on its shareholders and customers, and on the confidence many

Americans have in the markets and in their government.

The basic facts of this story are now well known. Less than a

year and a half ago, Enron was ranked as the seventh largest corporation in America. The energy trading company was a bright star

on Wall Street, a juggernaut trading at $90 a share at its height,

with revenue over $100 billion. Stock analysts could not recommend it fast enough, and the company made millionaires of

many loyal employees who invested their life savings in its stock.

Then last month Enron’s bright star collapsed into a black hole,

when it abruptly declared bankruptcy and was exposed as a house

of cards built on greed and deceit. To add insult to injury, average

workers and investors were cheated out of their life savings, while

a small group of executives and insiders made off with hundreds

of millions of dollars from well-timed stock sell-offs.

Today, the company’s stock is worth pennies, and it is no longer

traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Five thousand of its employees are out of a job, and thousands more are reeling in the ruin

of their retirement dreams. One of the Nation’s top accounting

firms, Arthur Andersen, is accused of helping to conceal Enron’s liabilities instead of reporting them. Public and private employee

pension funds from Florida to California have lost billions of dollars, and at a time when over 60 percent of Americans own stock,

in one way or another, the confidence of the investing public in the

stock market has been shaken.

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So this is not just a tempest in a teapot. It is an unprecedented

corporate storm that has already hurt thousands of people and now

leaves dark clouds over America’s economy and American’s confidence in their future personal economic security. This scandal

cries out for thorough congressional investigation to make sure that

nothing like this ever happens again.

Yet, because Enron has made substantial political contributions

to Members of Congress and the Executive Branch, some have

questioned the capacity of any congressional committee to conduct

an independent, thorough investigation of Enron.

Now I think there are two things we in Congress can do to overcome that skepticism and rebuild public trust. One is simply to do

a completely independent and demanding investigation, and that is

the intention of this Committee. The second is to pass campaign finance reform.

As for this Committee, we have a clear duty, under the rules of

the Senate, to investigate, and we will carry out that duty by

conducting an investigation that is independent, comprehensive,

aggressive, fair and nonpartisan. We should neither jump to conclusions before the facts justify them, nor hesitate to ask tough

questions of those in the public and private sectors who can

produce the facts that we need in order to get answers, and we will

follow the facts wherever they lead us.

This is a big and complicated investigation. So our Committee

has divided it between the full Committee and our lead investigative committee. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations,

chaired by Senator Levin, with Senator Collins as Ranking Republican, will investigate the internal malfeasance of Enron and its

auditors, the role of the board of directors, conflicts of interests, offshore tax havens and insider trading.

Here at the full Committee level, we are going to focus on the

external controls and protectors, the Federal agencies and laws,

and ask why, in this case, they could not better protect the thousands of employees and investors who have suffered from Enron’s

untimely and unnatural demise.

As the Senate’s chief oversight committee, it is our responsibility,

again, under the Senate rules, to make sure the Federal Government is as effective as it can be in protecting the public interest.

Because in this case so many have lost so much, this Committee

must ask if the relevant Federal agencies, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Labor Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Federal Energy Regulatory

Commission did everything they could have done to protect the

public and, if not, why not.

At least one of those agencies was formed way back in the most

serious crisis American capitalism has ever faced, the Great Depression. It and those other watchdog agencies that have followed

it, have been established, I think, to require the fullest disclosure

and fairest play that are necessary to make our market economy

work for the benefit of the many, the broad middle class and not

just the privileged insider few.

Now, in the context of the Enron scandal, people are asking, and

we will ask, whether these agencies need to be strengthened to perVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
3

form this critically important function. Here are some of the questions we are going to ask:

How was Enron allowed to hide its debt and losses in shady accounting from SEC oversight?

Could the Labor Department have intervened when Enron

barred its employees from selling company stock in their 401(k)

plans and blocked them from salvaging what was left of their retirement nest eggs?

Could FERC and the CFTC have exercised more oversight to rein

in abuses that might have contributed to Enron’s collapse?

We have got to ask, also, if the regulatory agencies need additional powers to prevent this kind of massive investor rip-off from

occurring again.

We have got to ask, and we will, and Senator Levin’s Subcommittee will, why the private sector checks and balances that we

rely on to keep the markets honest and open, the auditors, analysts, and independent corporate directors, did not do their part to

make sure that the Enron investors and employees were getting

the true story.

Are the auditors, with their enormous consulting fees, too beholden to management to protect the shareholders’ interests?

Are stock analysts too concerned about protecting the lucrative

business relationships of their firms to be objective in their assessments of companies?

Are independent directors, with their stock options, and consulting contracts and corporate perks, truly independent?

Is the system, in sum, so rife with conflicts of interest that the

average American, trusting his or her future to the stock market,

is inadequately informed and, therefore, poorly protected?

We are going to begin our oversight and investigation during a

series of hearings during the next several weeks on the most important public policy questions that have emerged from the Enron

scandal. At the same time, we will also issue written interrogatories to the agencies of the Federal Government that have had

jurisdiction over Enron and to the White House to determine what

they knew and did regarding Enron’s regulation by the four agencies I mentioned earlier over the last several years.

We also plan to request, by subpoena, that Enron and Arthur

Andersen turn over documents related to their context with the

same Federal agencies and offices. After we have collected that information and conducted additional interviews, we will report our

findings to the public in hearings to be conducted later this year.

In the end, I hope that this Committee will have specific recommendations to make to change the law and regulation, recommendations that will strengthen the watchdogs, both in and out

of the Federal Government, so, I repeat, nothing like the Enron

scandal ever happens again.

In today’s hearing, we are going to set the stage for what will

follow and try to put the Enron story into context by defining a set

of the most important policy issues that have come into question

as a result of Enron’s collapse. The sudden, wholly unanticipated

failure of the Nation’s seventh largest corporation, under infuriatingly suspicious circumstances, with grave consequences for thousands of people, is a clarion call for all of us in government to make

4

sure we are doing all we can to protect the integrity of our markets, that in their way have allowed the growth of the great American middle class, and the savings and investments of the American people. That is what our Committee intends to do.

I would like to say just a few words, briefly, to my fellow Members of the Committee. We are beginning a journey today, one that

will be long, and complicated and often controversial, but it is a

very important journey. It is not a journey that was on our Committee agenda for this year, but then Enron happened, and now

this Committee, which is uniquely charged with oversight and investigation by the Senate Rules, has a duty to act.

Along the way, there will be people outside the Committee who

will try to distract us and divide us. For my part, I pledge to you

that I will do everything possible to make sure they do not succeed.

I want to end this journey together, as we begin it together today,

having found the truth, as best we could, and proposing reforms

that are the best we can.

I am very privileged to have Senator Fred Thompson as the

Ranking Republican on this Committee. We have worked closely together over the years. I have great respect for Senator Thompson.

I might even say I like him. [Laughter.]

I even, occasionally, enjoy his company.

I would say, in specific regard to this matter, I have consulted

with him, as we have shaped our investigative plan, and I look forward to working closely with him as the investigation proceeds.

I am also pleased that Senator Levin, Senator Collins, and their

staffs are working closely together on the work of the Permanent

Subcommittee on Investigations.

Senator Thompson.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I believe it is correct to say that this marks the first day of the

first full Senate Committee hearing on the Enron matter, and it

clearly is an appropriate matter for the Governmental Affairs Committee. How our government agencies and institutions perform is

a vital part of the inquiry that needs to be made, as Congress

works its way to the bottom of this.

Mr. Chairman, I think you have set exactly the right tone, and

I would like to say that I am pleased that you are chairing these

hearings. Having worked closely with you in the past, I know of no

one who has a more proven record of fairness and objectivity, and

I look forward to working with you on this matter.

I think we really have an opportunity to do some good here, to

examine what went wrong and to consider constructive changes to

the governance of our public capital markets, which appear to be

inadequate to the demands of the 21st Century and the complex financial transactions that now take place on a daily basis.

It is true that not every aspect of the Enron matter is either unusual or especially a cause of great concern. For instance, to what

extent is this simply a case of individual misconduct or illegal conduct? No system known to man can prevent unscrupulous and clever individuals from manipulating the system and even getting

away with it for a period of time.

5

Also, how much of this financial disaster was simply the results

of bad business judgment and legitimate risk taking that simply

did not pan out? This is not the first big company to go belly up

with losses to stockholders and employees, and when it happens it

is not always because of illegal or unethical conduct.

But while it may be that part of what we are seeing here is individual misconduct or simple bad business judgment, both of which

our system is very capable of dealing with, and we are in the process of dealing with it right now, there also seems to be some systematic failures that are much more troubling.

Our free markets and our public financial system—much as our

government—are dependent upon certain checks and balances.

Some of the unfortunate tendencies of human nature that were of

concern to our Founding Fathers, are just as prevalent in the corporate world, as they are in the political world. People entrusted

with power need watchdogs and must be required to operate under

public scrutiny. We must ask ourselves where were the watchdogs

here? Where were the auditors, the law firms, the board of directors, the analysts, and the government agencies?

As an economist recently pointed out, we must especially look at

the role played by auditors. As they said, ‘‘The capital markets and,

indeed, capitalism itself can function efficiently only if the highest

standards of accounting, disclosure and transparency are observed.

In America, well-policed stock markets, fearsome regulations at the

SEC, stern accounting standards in the form of generally accepted

accounting principles, and the perceived audit skills of the Big 5

accounting firms have long been seen as crucial to the biggest,

most liquid and most admired capital markets in the world.’’ The most troubling feature of this issue to me is not so much

how these entities or gatekeepers, watchdogs failed in the Enron

matter, as the fact that this may be indicative of problems with

auditors, boards, and gatekeepers in general. For one thing, we

have learned that most of them are up to their necks in conflicts

of interest. One way or another, all of these people, especially the

private entities, have tremendous financial incentive for the company to make the numbers and to keep the stock price high.

This, of course, plays right into the hands of the unscrupulous

corporate executive, who is willing to cover up the financial realities of the corporation through nondisclosure, taking corporate debt

off the books and any number of things that would raise a question

in the mind of an average high school bookkeeping student.

As is often the case, the real scandal here may be in the form

of not what is illegal, but what is totally permissible. If the generally accepted accounting principles allow the bookkeeping shenanigans that have been reported in the press, then we should all

go into the derivative business.

It seems that all too often the name of the corporate game is to

conceal the true financials, while doing the minimum amount of

disclosure to avoid legal exposure. The system is clearly not designed with the primary interests of the general public or the investor in mind.

Also, what about the role of the government agencies? What

should they have caught? Do they have an adequate staff? We have

17,000 public companies in this country. Is the SEC supposed to

6

keep up with all of them? Is it necessarily just an after-the-fact

proposition? Perhaps it is. Can we put a government official in

every board room in the Nation?

Also, what about those rare instances where the government

catches wrongdoing? Are penalties sufficient to deter this kind of

behavior?

So, while issues such as individual wrongdoing and who made

contacts with the administration are interesting and titillating, the

issue of most long-term importance to our country has to do with

the integrity of our systems.

It is also the area in which we have the most responsibility as

legislators. We must address our legal and regulatory framework,

not as what we thought it was, but as we now know it to be, and

work together toward reforming it.

As I said, I believe we have an opportunity here, Mr. Chairman,

to do some real good on a bipartisan basis, and who knows, in the

process, we may even finally decide that allowing huge amounts of

soft-money contributions to public officials is not really such a good

idea. We may even come to the conclusion that this practice is always just a scandal waiting to happen, and we do ourselves and

the institution we serve a disservice by tolerating it.

So, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you and other

Members of this Committee toward a really constructive set of

hearings. Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Thompson. Thanks

very much.

I am now going to give each of the Members of the Committee

an opportunity for an opening statement, which I ask them, as best

as they are able, to keep it close to 5 minutes.

Senator Levin.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN

Senator LEVIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Senator Thompson, for your statements, which I thought were really

on target.

The Enron debacle has stirred the passions of Americans nationwide. The deceptions and the accounting gimmicks, the shredding

of documents that have occurred shake the very foundation of our

confidence in corporate America. What a travesty. Enron’s management made out like bandits, while tens of thousands of average

people saw their savings, retirement funds or jobs go down the

drain. People are now concerned that the marketing of the stock of

other U.S. corporations may be no more than ‘‘pump and dump’’

schemes writ large.

Enron’s abrupt collapse from corporate star to disgraced bankrupt is crucial for all of us to understand, because each and every

American’s future is tied to the success or failure of corporate

America. Publicly traded companies employ millions of Americans.

They are the key to U.S. international competitiveness. Over half

of all U.S. households are now investing in American capital markets, placing their hopes for a college education for their children,

quality care for their parents, and adequate money for their retirement, in the hands of our publicly traded companies.

7

I was, frankly, surprised when Treasury Secretary O’Neill said,

‘‘Companies come and go. Part of the genius of capitalism is people

get to make good decisions or bad decisions, and they get to pay

the consequences or enjoy the fruits of their decisions.’’

Well, Ken Lay and his colleagues at Enron got the fruits. The

employees and stockholders are the ones who suffered the consequences.

We have laws and regulations designed to ensure that our publicly traded corporations are managed for the benefit of stockholders and employees. We require boards of directors to serve as

a check on overreaching and bad judgment by corporate offices. We

require outside auditors to make sure company accounting practices are accurate and trustworthy. We require transparent financial reporting so that investors can track their investments and decide when to buy or sell stock.

Yet, in the case of Enron, we have misleading financial statements, corporate conflicts of interest, insider profits at the same

time employees were losing their shirts, off-shore shenanigans, hidden debt, and what I call tax laundering—that is, taking earnings

that are taxable in the United States and somehow creating offshore paper entities in the Caribbean or elsewhere through which

to route them and, presto, convert them to nontaxable earnings.

Enron also avoided hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes by its

use of stock options. Some years ago some of us fought to require

corporations to treat stock options on their financial statements the

same way they treat them on their tax returns. Corporate executives receive large quantities of stock options from their companies.

When they exercise those options, the companies can claim a compensation expense on their tax return, while accounting rules let

them omit that same expense from the corporate earnings statement.

The company can tell Uncle Sam one thing, but its shareholders

or future stock buyers the opposite. That is one of the means by

which Enron avoided paying taxes for 4 out of the last 5 years,

while bragging to investors about skyrocketing revenues.

Enron is far from unique in that regard, since other corporations

use the same technique. The stock-option loophole that Enron used

makes no sense to me. But when the Financial Accounting Standards Board or FASB, the entity that decides the accounting standards, tried to change the rules, audit firms and major corporations

fought the board tooth and nail.

It may be that Enron and Andersen broke laws or it may be that

the principal scandal is what passes for legal conduct in today’s

marketplace. Some of our witnesses will be telling us today that it

is not just Enron, that our entire system of corporate management,

auditing, stock analysis, investment banking needs a top-to-bottom

shake-up and major repairs.

Many have been raising flags, shouting warnings for years, including the witnesses before us today. Arthur Levitt, former SEC

Chairman, for one, carried on an intense and often lonely battle to

curtail the conflicts of interest that are inherent in the practice of

permitting our largest auditors to serve as both outside auditor and

management consultant to the same company.

8

Mr. Chairman, I am very fortunate that Senator Collins is the

Ranking Republican on our Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The legislative effort that is needed to turn this travesty into

a positive force, to clean up some long-festering problems in U.S.

corporate governance and accounting practice will require a sustained effort from all of us.

I know that she, with her history and experience of chairing

hearings in such a distinguished, fair, and thoughtful way when

she was Chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations,

will help us a great deal to make the best contribution that we can

to that sustained effort which must be made if we are going to

clean up the mess that we, indeed, all face. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Senator Levin follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN

The Enron debacle has stirred the passions of Americans nationwide. The deceptions and accounting gimmicks and shredding of documents that occurred shake the

very foundation of our confidence in corporate America. What a travesty. Enron’s management made out like bandits while tens of thousands of average people saw

their savings, retirement funds or jobs go down the drain. People are now concerned

that the marketing of the stock of other U.S. corporations may be no more than

‘‘pump and dump’’ schemes writ large.

Enron’s abrupt collapse from corporate star to a disgraced bankrupt is crucial for

all of us to understand, because—like it or not—each and every American’s future

is tied to the success or failure of corporate America. Publicly traded companies employ tens of millions of Americans; they are the key to U.S. international competitiveness. Over half of all U.S. households are now investing in American capital

markets—placing their hopes for a college education for their children, quality care

for their elderly parents, and adequate money for their retirement in the hands of

our publicly traded companies.

I was surprised when Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said, ‘‘Companies come and

go. Part of the genius of capitalism is people get to make good decisions or bad decisions and they get to pay the consequences or enjoy the fruits of their decisions.’’

Well, Ken Lay and his colleagues got the fruits and haven’t yet suffered the consequences; the employees and stockholders have done that.

We have laws and regulations designed to ensure that our publicly traded corporations are managed for the benefit of stockholders and employees. We require

Boards of Directors to serve as a check on overreaching and bad judgment by corporate officers. We require outside auditors to make sure their accounting practices

are accurate and trustworthy. We require transparent financial reporting so that investors can track their investments and decide when to buy or sell stock. We require

of our public accountants and corporate directors a fiduciary responsibility to act in

the best interest of the investing public and the corporation’s stockholders, and not

in their own financial interest.

Yet in the case of Enron we have misleading financial statements; corporate conflicts of interest; insider profits at the same time employees were losing their shirts;

offshore shenanigans; hidden debt, and what I call tax laundering—that is, taking

earnings that are taxable in the United States and somehow creating offshore paper

entities in the Caribbean through which to route them and voila—convert them to

nontaxable earnings.

Enron also avoided hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes by its use of stock options. Some years ago some of us fought to require corporations to treat stock options on their financial statements the same way they treat them on their tax returns. Corporate executives receive large quantities of stock options from their companies. When they exercise those options, the company can claim a compensation

expense on their tax returns, while accounting rules let them omit that same expense from the corporate earnings statement. The company can tell Uncle Sam one

thing and its shareholders the opposite. That’s one of the means by which Enron

avoided paying taxes for four out of the last five years, while bragging to investors

about skyrocketing revenues. The stock option loophole Enron used makes no sense,

but when the Financial Accounting Standards Board or FASB—the entity that decides the accounting standards—tried to change the rules, audit firms and major

corporations fought the Board tooth and nail. In the end, the best FASB could get

was a footnote noting the earnings charge on a company’s books. But that stock opVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
9

tion footnote—like so many Enron footnotes—doesn’t tell the true financial story of

a company.

It may be that Enron and Andersen broke laws or it may be that the principal

scandal is what passes for legal conduct in today’s marketplace. Some of our witnesses will be telling us today that it’s not just Enron—that our entire system of

corporate management—auditing, stock analysis, investment banking—needs a topto-bottom shake-up and major repairs. The Big 5 accounting firms admitted in a recent petition to the SEC that when it comes to financial disclosure many ‘‘public

companies provide boilerplate or very high-level disclosures that provide little or no

meaningful information.’’ And that’s from the accountants themselves—the very

group charged with ensuring that companies issue fair financial statements. What

an indictment that is of our financial disclosure system.

Many in the industry have been raising red flags and shouting warnings for

years. Arthur Levitt, the former SEC Chairman for one, carried on an intense and

often lonely battle to curtail the conflicts of interest inherent in the practice of permitting our largest auditors to serve as both outside auditor and management consultant to the same company. Mr. Levitt knew what he was talking about, but not

many wanted to listen. The question now is whether we’ve learned the lesson Mr.

Levitt is still trying to teach.

Just about all the various failures in our corporate governance systems have coalesced in the Enron saga. Hopefully Enron’s implosion, while damaging to so many

lives, may serve as the engine for reforms long overdue. We already have some

sense of what needs to be done: Insisting on greater auditor independence; a stronger Financial Accounting Standards Board; fairer accounting, including consistent

treatment of stock options; ending the use of offshore tax havens; more accountable

corporate governance; and employee pension protections.

A large number of investigations are ongoing in the Congress and the Executive

Branch, because we have a lot of ground to cover and different responsibilities to

fulfill. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, and on which

Senator Susan Collins serves as the Ranking Member, will be paying particular attention in the months ahead to the role of the Enron Board of Directors and officers,

the role of Arthur Andersen ,particularly with regard to Enron’s Special Purpose

Entities, and Enron’s use of offshore entities and tax havens.

Our hearings in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will come later

in the year, after our analysis of the thousands of documents that we receive as a

result of the 51 subpoenas issued two weeks ago. I look forward to the hearings in

our full committee, which will examine what federal agencies could have and should

have done to detect or prevent the Enron debacle. The legislative effort needed to

turn this travesty into a positive force to clean up some long-festering problems in

U.S. corporate governance and accounting practice will require a sustained effort

from all of us.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Levin. Senator Collins.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS

Senator COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and Senator Levin for convening this important investigation into some of the key issues involved in the Enron bankruptcy, the largest corporate failure in our

Nation’s history.

It is my hope that, with the help of our witnesses today, we can

begin to gain a better understanding of how the financial and regulatory systems utterly failed to protect the company’s shareholders,

employees and customers, while top executives apparently walked

away with handsome profits on the sale of their Enron stock.

A common theme in many of the issues we will examine is conflicts of interest. Corporate officers, outside accountants, board

members, and security analysts all have duties, both legal and ethical, to investors, to clients, to employees, to regulators and to the

public. To be more specific, we impose on corporate managers and

financial professionals a fiduciary obligation to act in the best interest of those who provide the capital.

10

A brief review shows just how pervasive the role of the nongovernmental protector of investor interests is in our capitalist system. We impose, for example, on auditor, the obligation to ensure

that investors have access to financial statements that accurately

and fairly describe the finances of the companies in which they invest. We impose on corporate managers the obligation to act in a

fashion that will maximize the benefits received by the firm’s stockholders. We impose on corporate directors the obligation to safeguard investor interests by monitoring the conduct of those managers, and we impose on retail brokerage firms the obligation to

give their clients competent and objective advice about the companies they follow.

For a system that places such heavy reliance on the obligation

of some private citizens to safeguard the interests of other private

citizens, we are remarkably lenient, perhaps even lax, in allowing

conflicts of interest. The potential for such conflicts to cause trouble

in the accounting arena, in particular, has attracted considerable

attention not just in the Enron case, but over the past few years,

as the number of companies restating their earnings has increased

significantly.

Indeed, Enron is only the latest in a string of well-known large

corporations whose books were blessed by auditors, despite questionable accounting. Financial data, compiled in accordance with

generally accepted accounting principles, certified as such by an

independent auditor, and fully disclosed under securities laws, are

fundamental to the integrity of our financial markets.

If a company’s financial statements do not accurately represent

its financial health, investors cannot make prudent decisions on

whether or not to purchase its stock. Without the confidence engendered by fully disclosed financial data, our vibrant capital markets,

which help businesses finance new plants and create new jobs, and

which many Americans rely on for their children’s college tuition

and their own retirement, will be ultimately undermined. The very

health of our economy hinges on the integrity of our financial markets.

A champion of small investors and strong capital markets,

former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt will be testifying before the

Committee today. Chairman Levitt was very helpful to me when I

held hearings with Senator Levin on penny stock fraud and day

trading. He has long pressed for a prohibition on accounting firms

providing both consulting and auditing services for the same client,

to prevent the kinds of conflict of interest that contributed to the

collapse of Enron.

Although the Enron bankruptcy raises many important issues,

perhaps the most important to the individual investor may be what

it has to teach us about the 401(k) plans relied upon by so many

Americans as a future source of retirement income.

Private pensions governed by ERISA are intended to help Americans reach the goal of retirement security. Because of the rapid decline in Enron’s stock price, however, thousands of its employees

find themselves in dire straits, having lost nearly all of their savings from a lifetime of hard work.

Like Enron’s employees, many American workers have a disproportionate share of their employer’s stock in the 401(k) plan. In

11

fact, at some companies, workers have as much as 90 percent of

their retirement assets in their employer’s stock. One issue that I

am very interested in is whether employees have access to impartial financial advice, and Senator Jeff Bingaman and I have introduced legislation to try to achieve that goal.

Although it is not perfect, it is important to remember that our

systems of accounting and financial regulation are the best in the

world. That makes the Enron case all that much more troubling because it simply should not have happened. It represents a colossal

failure of virtually every mechanism that is supposed to provide

the checks and balances on which the integrity of our capital markets depend.

I look forward to working with the Chairman, as well as the

Chairman of the Subcommittee, my distinguished colleague, Senator Levin, as we proceed with these issues.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Collins.

Senator Durbin.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN

Senator DURBIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

With Biblical certainty, the United States preaches the gospel of

free markets and capitalism to the unconverted around the world.

Third-world nations, former command and control economies, and

socialist governments alike are all exhorted to let the laws of supply and demand run their course.

As proof of the truth of our message, we can point to our own

experience—a frontier nation which joined democratic government

to a market economy and created the freest, most stable and prosperous nation in history.

But the American story also includes a chapter where we came

to realize that the rule of law and the guiding hand of government

were critical to a just result in the world of business.

Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to acknowledge that

the genius of capitalism could also be a triumph of greed without

rule and regulation to save us from our baser instincts.

Today this Committee joins a chorus of Congressional critics

pecking at the carrion of Enron. When the mightiest fall, the politically curious scramble over the ruins. What we know is this: A

flawed and fraudulent business concept failed. But there are other

things we also know:

When the corporate insiders at Enron realized the ship was sinking, they grabbed the lifeboats and left the women and children,

their workers and investors, to drown. When the accountants and

auditors responsible for policing Enron were on the beat, they were

also on the take—a badge in one hand, an open palm in the other.

When workers and investors were captivated by too-good-to-betrue profits and fraudulent claims by the corporate bigwigs in

Houston, they made decisions they could not escape. And when the

high-flying corporate executives became political high rollers, they

left a lot of embarrassed people in their wake.

After all of the sound and fury of these investigations, the bottom-line questions are: Is Congress willing to amend the law to

rein in the greed of the next Enron? Are we willing to concede that

the genius of capitalism can result in ruthless behavior without our

12

oversight and the protection of law? Can we save pensioners and

investors—who were outsiders believing in the fairness of the market—from the corporate insiders who walk away from these colossal business train wrecks with their pockets full and without a

scratch?

Over 100 million Americans who own stock and 42 million who

own 401(k)’s will be watching to see if these hearings and many

others on Capitol Hill are about more than just face time on the

nightly news.

To me, this national debate is about more than a failed corporate

giant. It is about the values of our Nation. Enron is a big story not

just because of its bankruptcy. Sadly, bankruptcies occur every day.

Enron is a big story because it reminds us of our vulnerability. It

reminds us that without the enforcement of fair and just laws, the

average American doesn’t have a fighting chance.

Mr. Chairman, I welcome the opportunity in the coming weeks

and months to transform what we learn into legislation that will

guard against a repeat of this shameful chapter in American business history. Thank you.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Durbin. Senator Cochran.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COCHRAN

Senator COCHRAN. Mr. Chairman, I commend you for having this

hearing to learn the facts surrounding the collapse of the Enron

Corporation. While business failures are common, it is not at all

common to see a company of Enron’s size driven to bankruptcy and

virtually unheard of to see it happen as quickly as it did, that a

company like Enron could fail so precipitously and with such devastating consequences is both puzzling and troubling.

Particularly devastated are Enron’s employees, many of whom

have lost their jobs and nearly all of whom have seen their pensions and 401(k)’s disappear. While business ventures and investments in them always entail risk, the government has a role in assuring that there are safeguards in place to keep employees and investors from being victimized by inappropriate practices.

With Enron’s failure, we must ask whether such safeguards were

adequate and, if they were adequate, were they improperly circumvented? We should also find out if any Federal agencies failed

to carry out their responsibilities.

This is a very complex case, and I hope we use these hearings

to learn the facts and understand the complexities so we can determine what we need to do to help avoid this kind of unfortunate

event in the future.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Cochran. Senator Torricelli.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR TORRICELLI

Senator TORRICELLI. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Levitt, and

Mr. Turner.

The matter of Enron is going to be addressed in a variety of forums. Some of these are going to be criminal proceedings because

laws have obviously been violated. Creditors will be in bankruptcy

13

1 Chart entitled ‘‘Market Losses to Investors After Corporate Restatements’’ appears in the

Appendix on page 135. 2 Chart entitled ‘‘Corporate Restatements Have Increased Dramatically in the Last Three

Years’’ appears in the Appendix on page 136.

court for many years seeking redress, and there will be civil suits

in courtrooms across the country involving thousands of people.

The responsibility of this Committee and this Congress is somewhat different. Allow the criminal and the civil proceedings to run

their course, but our responsibility is to set what happened with

Enron in some perspective. My hope is the testimony this morning

begins that process. The collapse of Enron has been an individual

tragedy for 5,000 employees and thousands of investors, people

have lost their jobs, many will lose their homes, their families are

in peril, and thousands of other Americans have lost their retirement savings.

This Committee and this Congress needs to recognize the impact

on an even larger scale. Many of my colleagues have commented

about the uniqueness of the American capital market. Those comments are well stated today. It is no exercise in hyperbole to note

that we have become the world’s largest economy in large measure

because we created confidence in the world’s most transparent

equity markets.

The uniqueness of our system is that the individual worker, the

retiree, the family planning their finances, feels that they stand in

an equal position with members of the board, large firms, and management. All have access to equal information. They can make individual judgments—good or bad, we stand together. If that confidence is shaken, it is at enormous perils, to the financial future

of the country.

Senator Lieberman noted that our duty is to ensure that what

happened with Enron must never happen again. Perhaps, but the

simple truth is it is happening all of the time. Enron has brought

a dirty little lie into the light of day. The system of confidence and

transparency in our markets has been steadily eroding.

Mr. Levitt, the purpose of these opening comments by Members

of the Senate, if they serve any purpose at all, is to tend to direct

testimony, to set a stage where you might respond. Here is the

stage I would like to set. I have three charts I would like you to

see.

Market losses to investors after corporate restatements.1 Now

every American knows about Enron, their restatements, their false

accounting. What was a $17-billion issue in 1998 has risen to a

$31-billion question in what has become a habit, a routine of corporate restatements. Some are undoubtedly required, some are necessitated by changing events, but the changing culture of corporate reporting to investors is at least suspicious.

The second chart 2 will give you an idea as well of what this

means in terms of the number of corporations. It may have been

proper in 1998 that 116 corporations needed to do restatements.

Markets change, situations are altered. But it is at least suspicious

that by the year 2000, 233 needed to do the same. Is Enron

unique?

14

1 Chart entitled ‘‘Corporate Overstatements In the Past Decade’’ appears in the Appendix on

page 137.

Well, the third chart,1 I think, illustrates Enron is not even the

largest of what have become a series of outrageous corporate overstatements to the tunes of billions of dollars in recent decades.

Enron is now in bankruptcy, so is Sunbeam, largely, unrecognized outside of the investor community, Waste Management being

even larger. These companies are not alone.

Mr. Levitt, I hope you will address these questions in your testimony. We would all prefer that the markets are able to regulate

themselves. We all believe it would be better if professions could

engage in self-management. We are being reminded that there is

a reason for government regulation. Mark Twain once said that before he takes down a fence, he likes to ask why somebody put it

up.

It is not so long ago you reminded the country and the Congress

the reason for some additional regulations in the accounting industry. The country may not have listened, the Congress did not respond. We were wrong. You were right. Now we need to discover

what else it is that we should be doing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Torricelli. Senator

Voinovich.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this

hearing today.

The story of Enron’s collapse into bankruptcy has dominated the

headlines nationwide this month and has replaced the war on terrorism as the most common news story. It was just last month that

we were having hearings on terrorism. Enron is the most covered

news event so far this year.

As such, this Committee, along with at least nine other congressional committees, the Department of Justice, the Securities and

Exchange Commission, and the Department of Labor are looking

into the causes of the corporation’s collapse and any wrongdoing

that may have taken place.

Our Nation’s financial market is composed of a multi-layered system of checks and balances. Within a public company, the executives are obligated to report honest earnings in their books. Internal auditors are responsible for publishing fair and independent reports on the company’s financial situation. Audit committees are

responsible for ensuring that the auditors produce fair and accurate statements.

Outside of a public company, the external auditors are hired to

make sure the company’s finances present an accurate picture of

what is going on. Financial analysts scrutinize the company’s financial situation to recommend to investors whether or not the

company is a smart investment. Credit lenders analyze a company’s financial reports to determine the level of risk associated

with lending to the company, and the Securities and Exchange

Commission and other Federal regulators are responsible for monitoring the financial markets and the public companies that compose this market.

15

This system usually works pretty well. Mr. Chairman, in the

case of Enron, the multi-layered system of checks and balances

failed. It calls out for Congress to consider overhauling the whole

system to guarantee that we are not going to have any more situations like Enron.

The aspect of Enron’s collapse that bothers me most, however, is

the dishonesty and disloyalty that appears to have existed at the

top of the corporation, conduct which has dealt a lethal economic

blow to thousands of shareholders and employees and cast a dark

shadow on corporate America. It will take a long time for people’s

faith in investing to be restored.

Our country has the best system of civil and criminal laws in the

world, and if there was any wrongdoing—and I suspect there was—

at Enron, we must utilize that system to the fullest extent to make

an example of executives and warn other public companies and

their executives not to gamble with the life savings of thousands

of American families and the investing public.

In Ohio alone, the Public Employees Retirement System, of

which I am a member, and the State Teachers Retirement System

estimate their losses as a result of investments in Enron at approximately $127 million. The State has filed a class action lawsuit

against Enron in coordination with a number of other States that

invest in Enron as a result of the company’s misleading financial

statements.

I am equally concerned about the allegations I read in the paper

about Arthur Andersen’s failure to do its job. I know a little bit

about this company from my experience with them as Governor,

and it was not very good. I think we should take a careful look at

our accounting system and evaluate it if we can, under the current

system, provide the unbiased assessment which the public expects

and is entitled to. Is a new independent oversight of the profession

needed? At the very minimum, we must prevent the inherent conflict of interest that arises when a company hires the same firm to

audit its books and then provide consulting services.

In the midst of headlines about the Enron scandal, there is some

good news, and that is, the condition of our Nation’s energy markets. The biggest corporation in the world collapsed within a few

weeks, and I did not hear about a single blackout that resulted

from that crash, nor have I seen a tremendous fluctuation in gas

prices, as some would have predicted. I think it says a lot about

the country’s efforts to deregulate our energy markets, and I think

we need to continue with deregulation in the smartest way possible.

In closing, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today

and from our witnesses in the future on what steps the Federal

Government must take to guarantee that there are not going to be

any more Enrons and how should we restore the public’s faith in

our financial markets. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Voinovich. Senator

Cleland.

16

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND

Senator CLELAND. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr.

Levitt, and Mr. Turner. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Let me just say that, before I came to this position in the Senate,

I was Secretary of State in Georgia for some 12 years. In that

State, the Secretary of State is the commissioner of securities, that

is, the State regulator of securities, primarily responsible for looking after the small investor. I am fortunate to be served now as my

administrative assistant by Wayne Howell, who was then the assistant commissioner of securities. So we have been together in this

business of securities regulation or trying to detect fraud and prevent it for quite a while.

I will say that while I was Secretary of State, we saw various examples of fraud. We were the first State to put First Jersey Securities out of business. We were the first State to come with a major

fine against Drexel Burnham Lambert. We were the first State to

really run the penny stock industry out of our State. So I have

been dealing with the question of fraud and securities malfeasance

for quite a while.

I will say that if the allegations here in this case of Enron are

true, it is the worst case of lying, cheating, and stealing that I have

come across in my public life and in 20 years, almost, of dealing

with the securities industry.

We, in the Congress, will be hearing volumes of testimony and

evidence related to this collapse, but it really does come down to

this: Enron possibly lied, cheated, and stole from its own investors

and employees. That is the bottom line.

It is interesting that in combat, officers eat last. It is obvious in

the combat in the marketplace, Enron officers ate first and left the

troops to fend for themselves. That is unconscionable. It is unconscionable in war, it is unconscionable in peace, and it is unconscionable in our economy.

We are actually here in this Committee to see if this is true, if

these allegations were indeed the case. We have got hearings, subpoenas, and so forth. The bottom line is that this is real. It is real

in my State. We have a teacher retirement system there. We have

an employees’ retirement system there. They have already lost

$127 million from the Enron collapse.

There are people in my State who worked for Enron. I came

across a family the other day that, through their 401(k) program

that they thought was very solid and sound, they invested their life

savings. The head of that family is now sacking groceries—in the

background himself—and does not really have a substantial future.

There were really two Enrons: One run for the insiders and the

big boys at the top; the other Enron run for the employees and the

public.

Some interesting facts: If you were an Enron insider, from the

sale of company stock last year, you made $130 million. But if you

were just a shareholder, you took a $63 billion hit.

The average compensation for just a board member of Enron,

$400,000—but the average loss if you were just an investor was 71

percent.

17

If you were an insider and one of the big boys that ran that operation, you put together 900 partnerships that were based offshore,

and then Enron itself paid no Federal taxes last year.

These numbers really paint a tale of two corporations, basically

a corporation that the average citizen and the average employee

could not get a handle on in truth. But there is Ken Lay giving employees in an online chat in September these words, when he said

about Enron stock it was ‘‘an incredible bargain.’’

Now, basically, the two Enrons had a powerful negative effect. It

is fascinating that over $1 billion has been lost by retirement

funds, pension funds of people like teachers, firefighters, and other

public employees. What an irony. The very first responders we depend on in case of a terrorist attack were the first to get hurt by

the Enron collapse.

Most pension funds, mutual funds, and institutional investors

held some Enron stock, and when one out of every two Americans

are invested in the market, most small investors in America now

have lost money over the Enron collapse, whether they know it or

not.

A sound investment is based on sound information. Georgia is a

full-disclosure State. One of the things that bothers me most about

the Enron situation is the lack of full disclosure, the lack of transparency. What kind of information did Enron investors have?

Again, they had assurances from Ken Lay in September that ‘‘the

company is fundamentally sound.’’ An outright lie. They had recommendations from Wall Street’s top investment firms recommending Enron as a strong buy. Wrong. And they had a stamp of

approval from auditor Arthur Andersen saying that information in

Enron’s financial statements was reliable. False and fraudulent.

Of course, we all know what is the situation now. Having been

Secretary of State as I was in charge of professional boards also,

and one of those was the CPA Board in Georgia. I find it hard to

believe that professional people, CPAs, sworn to do a professional

job, would not only be analyzing the books but cooking the books

at the same time. What an American tragedy.

Mr. Chairman, as I go over these reams of documents, and go

through these hearings, I will try to keep an open mind. But I am

shocked at the revelations already disclosed to the Committee, not

only what were potentially illegal, but also what were the legal actions taken by the corporations, actions which were perfectly legal

but designed to hide losses, evade regulators, enrich corporate insiders.

Despite all these accounting irregularities, Enron’s most recent

annual report included two statements from its accounting firm,

Arthur Andersen. One stated Andersen’s opinion that Enron’s internal accounting system was ‘‘adequate to provide reasonable assurance as to the reliability of financial statements.’’ A lie. The

other stated Enron’s financial reports ‘‘present fairly in all material

aspects the financial condition’’ of the company. Wrong.

Why would Andersen make these statements? The real question

is: Why not? They were both Enron’s accountant and its strategic

business consultant. The fox was truly guarding the chicken coop,

and ultimately the people of America have had to pay a great price.

18

Interesting that this is not isolated. Twenty years ago, consulting

fees added up to about one-tenth of the revenues for major accounting firms. Today, those consulting firms—they account for about

half of the revenues for these consulting firms.

So the safeguards we thought we had in place have become little

more than window dressing. Our confidence is shaken. But hopefully this Committee can address this and, through real legislation

and real sunlight on the problem and real transparency in securities markets, can restore some of the lost confidence we have all

suffered.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Cleland.

Senator Bennett.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BENNETT

Senator BENNETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We have had a lot of conversation about Enron and Enron executives, and I won’t repeat any of that, but will just add this reflection:

Had the Enron business plan worked, of course, they would all

be heroes. That is a little like saying had the roulette wheel come

up red instead of black, the investor who put his money on red

would be considered a really smart guy, because what Enron management was doing was almost as dangerous, if not as dangerous,

as going to Las Vegas and putting their chips on one number or

another as far as the roulette table is concerned. But they were the

management. They were running the company, and they decide

that was the right thing to do.

What distresses me is that nobody who was looking over their

shoulders pointed out that they were gambling in such a high-risk

circumstance.

We have heard about Arthur Andersen. The auditors didn’t. We

have heard about the analysts who didn’t look as deep as they

should but were anxious to hang on to their relationships. We

haven’t heard anything about the outside directors. I have served

on boards of public companies, and I can give examples, as everyone in the room can, of outside directors who said, ‘‘Wait a minute,

we have a fiduciary responsibility as outside directors to call a halt

to this.’’

My first experience with a major bankruptcy was when I was

serving in the Nixon Administration on the Penn Central Railroad,

which in its own way was as glittering an example of corporate

success as Enron was, and it ended up going belly up.

The people who called that shot, who blew that whistle, who

raised the specter of bankruptcy were the outside directors. I remember very clearly when they came to the Nixon Administration

and said there is a serious problem. And I won’t go into the details

of what we then dealt with in trying to ameliorate the failure of

the then Nation’s largest railroad, with all of the implications that

had for transportation policy throughout the country. But it was

the outside directors who said we have a fiduciary responsibility to

the shareholders to point out the fact that management is on a

very dangerous course and this railroad is going to go under.

19

So there is a broader blanket to be thrown out here than just

beating up on the top executives of Enron, and I concur in the beating up that has gone on. I am not trying to defend them. But we

investors depend on auditors; we depend on the analysts from the

big investment firms; and we depend on the system of outside directors. I think there is a requirement that X percentage of the directors be outside directors, not insiders. And that system has

failed us.

I am not sure we can resolve it by passing laws that say every

outside director will henceforth take his duty seriously. I know

some outside directors, potential outside directors who refused to

accept appointments because they said you don’t have adequate insurance for the kind of class action lawsuits if I take this on.

But this is an opportunity for us to examine all aspects of the

way public companies work in this country and see what we can

do to improve it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Bennett. Senator

Carper.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

Senator CARPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will not attempt

to match the outrage or the eloquence of my colleagues who have

spoken before me. I would observe that I have never had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Levitt or Mr. Turner testify. I am going to get

that chance, and I am looking forward to that opportunity, and I

am going to be real brief.

Mr. Chairman, I have a statement I would like to enter for the

record, if I could.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Without objection, so ordered.

[The prepared statement of Senator Carper follows:]

OPENING PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

I know we’ve all read a lot in recent weeks about Enron’s collapse and I know

most of my colleagues and I will have multiple opportunities to study more closely

what happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. The Justice

Department and a number of congressional committees are also looking into this

matter. As we go about our work, however, I believe it is important to recognize

that Enron is not an isolated incident but instead the latest, and certainly the largest and most high-profile in a series large-scale corporate accounting mishaps. While

not on the same scale, Sunbeam, Waste Management, Rite Aid, Lucent and Xerox

have all had problems similar to Enron’s.

We’re not here this morning to hunt down the juicy details about who at Enron,

Arthur Andersen or even the Bush Administration knew what and what they were

doing about it. What we are doing is taking a look at some of the broader public

policy questions raised by this company’s failure.

While the United States still has the best auditing and accounting standards in

the world, and thus the strongest capital markets, Enron illustrates areas where

these standards must be improved. I don’t know yet which is the best course of action but we need to take steps before we hear about the next Enron to address the

independence of auditors and analysts, the oversight of the accounting profession

and the transparency of corporate disclosures.

In recent years, more and more Americans at all income levels have put more and

more of their retirement savings in the stock market. Enron’s failure raises serious

questions about the accuracy of the information investors have access to when making investment decisions. Investors have lost millions on their Enron stock, and

countless Enron employees have watched their retirement savings vanish as their

company collapsed in a matter of months. Congress, regulators and the accounting

profession must act now to restore investors’ confidence.

20

Senator CARPER. Senator Voinovich, alluded earlier to his participation in the State of Ohio’s pension plan for its employees when

he was governor. My guess is he also nominated those who served

as members of the board of trustees to oversee that pension plan.

I had a similar responsibility as governor for Delaware for a number of years. I took that responsibility seriously, as I am sure he

did.

There is more to this than the outrage that we feel on behalf of

those Enron employees who have lost their life savings. There is

more to this than the outrage we feel for those who might be members of the Ohio or Delaware State employee pension plans who

have lost measurably their retirement savings.

There is a bigger question, and that is the confidence that the

rest of the world, which is looking for places to invest their money

to ensure that we continue to enjoy their confidence; and as trillions of dollars move throughout the investment community and

many of them end up here, that we continue to be an attractive environment in which to invest those funds.

One of the best ways that we can do that, once we have completed flogged verbally those who have caused this disaster, is to

bear down and stay with this issue when the media maybe loses

attention and to continue to probe and to find the answers to the

questions so that we can ensure that not only have we just gotten

some satisfaction from venting our spleen at the outrages we have

learned of, but we have actually done something real to ensure that

other employees of companies but also other investors from around

the world will continue to invest in the securities within this country with the kind of confidence that has enabled us to be the most

successful Nation on Earth.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Carper. That is certainly our intention, which is to be judged by the ultimate product

of our oversight and investigation.

Senator Bunning.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BUNNING

Senator BUNNING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Obviously what we have before us today is a mess. There is no

other way to look at it. We have an energy trading company basically in ruins, thousands of employees with little or no retirement

savings, a major accounting firm under a cloud, and investors left

holding the bag.

We have heard allegations of shredding documents, shady business deals, and insider trading. Every day it seems a new revelation comes to light.

As it has been mentioned, in the year 2000, Fortune magazine

listed Enron as the seventh largest corporation in America. Now

the company has filed bankruptcy, the largest business ever to do

so in U.S. history.

Enron’s fall was relatively quick, but it seems to come on the

heels of several years of questionable business deals. Enron’s financial transactions are also extremely complicated, and we are only

beginning to understand exactly what happened to this company.

21

We are going to be asking who, what, when, where, and why for

a long time. I am confident that Congress and the Federal agencies

will move as quickly as possible to get the answers to these questions.

This is just the first of, I imagine, many hearings the Governmental Affairs Committee will hold, and at last count, there were

almost a dozen other congressional committees digging into this

Enron problem. Combine that with the investigations by the SEC,

Justice, Labor, the IRS, and all the private lawsuits that have been

filed, and you have definitely got a full-blown financial meltdown.

Some people have already started offering ideas about ways we

can prevent this from happening again. While ideas are always

helpful, the last thing we need is a knee-jerk reaction.

Before we charge in the middle of it and start making changes,

we have to understand exactly what happened before we can seriously propose legislation or regulatory changes. The story of Enron

employees who not only lost their jobs but also their retirement

savings should be a major wake-up call for all of us to look at the

companies that require their employees to invest their 401(k)’s in

their own stocks.

I am looking forward to working with the Committee as we get

to the bottom of this Enron mess and consider the changes that

need to be made.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Bunning. Senator

Carnahan.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARNAHAN

Senator CARNAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

America has the most vibrant and dynamic economy in the

world. The foundation of our economy is our capital markets, which

are robust and resilient. But the success of these markets depends

on the free flow of accurate and reliable information. Our markets

are the envy of the world because of the confidence that investors

have in the private and public institutions that produce, verify, and

analyze this information.

The collapse of Enron, however, represents a dramatic failure of

these institutions. These failures will have repercussions for years

to come. There were a number of failings, and let me mention just

three.

The first failing was committed by the company executives who

had a legal duty to act in the best interest of the shareholders. And

while I do not want to prejudge the facts in this case, based on

what we now know, it is fair to say that Enron executives did not

make full and candid disclosures of the company’s financial condition until they were forced to do so.

The next failure came when the accountants who were charged

with auditing the information that Enron presented certified that

it was consistent with the generally accepted accounting principles.

In this instance, the same firm who was auditing Enron’s financial

records was also advising Enron on its business operations and accruing lucrative fees. We do not know the total effect of this blatant

conflict of interest, but we know that the accountants failed to protect investors.

22

And, finally, there was the failure of government agencies. The

SEC is charged with regulating the financial activities of publicly

traded companies. They should ensure that the information provided to investors is accurate.

But with all of these safeguards in place, what went wrong? Why

didn’t the alarm bells go off sooner? These multiple failures have

created multiple victims. I feel for the employees who worked for

Enron, those who dedicated themselves to that company for so long

and now find themselves financially devastated.

And I sympathize with those who invested in Enron. They had

no reason to mistrust the information that Enron published to the

world. The massive debt hidden in partnerships was not known to

them or to the hundreds of analysts and advisors upon whom they

relied.

Public employees in Missouri have suffered large losses. The Missouri State Employees Retirement System has an impeccable

record of making conservative, prudent investments of employees’ pension funds. Still, the system owned just under 750,000 Enron

shares prior to the collapse and lost $8.7 million. Missouri teachers

fared even worse. Their retirement plan lost $22.8 million from investments in Enron.

If these sophisticated investors could not detect that Enron was

in poor financial condition, how could the average investor, putting

aside money for college or for retirement, how could they have

known?

Let me also suggest that the victims are not limited to those who

invested in Enron. Every person who owns stock or a mutual fund

or has a pension will suffer due to the collapse of Enron. The action

of Enron’s executives and its accountants together with the failure

of our oversight agencies have eroded investor confidence in our

markets.

Investors never had to consider that a large, reportedly profitable

company might go belly up in a span of months. Now they do.

Investors never had to question whether a prestigious accounting

firm would certify balance sheets that were grossly misleading.

And now they do.

Investors never had to wonder whether respected, highly compensated executives were playing a risky shell game with billions

of dollars. But now, thanks to Enron, they do.

This scandal will have an impact on investors’ confidence, stock

prices, and access to capital for many years to come. The task of

this Committee and the Congress as a whole is to identify where

the system failed, fix those problems, and begin to remedy them.

We need a greater transparency and an earlier warning system.

One warning system that a company may be in trouble is when its

executives are selling large amounts of stock. I have learned, however, that information about insider trading is not easily accessible.

When I directed my staff to request information from the SEC

about sales by Enron executives, they were told that I would have

to file a written request and wait 15 days. The SEC also stated

that 95 percent of the reports of insider trading were not filed electronically. This is unacceptable in a computer age.

So, today, I will introduce legislation that requires information

about insider sales of publicly traded companies to be filed elecVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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tronically on the day of the sale. The bill will also require the SEC

to make this information available to the public on the Internet.

This single reform could dramatically level the playing field between insiders and ordinary investors. Never again would company

executives be able to dump large amounts of company stock without facing immediate scrutiny about the financial health of their

company.

I know my colleagues will be proposing many other new ideas in

the coming days, and I hope these hearings will result in reforms,

for never again should workers and investors be violated as they

have been by an American corporation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Carnahan. Senator

Dayton.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON

Senator DAYTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend

you for holding this very important hearing. I also want to say to

my colleague, Senator Carnahan, please put me down as a cosponsor of your bill.

Mr. Chairman, I hope that this and subsequent hearings will discover and disclose the truth about this financial debacle, especially

the actions of Enron’s officers and directors who caused it and of

the auditors at Arthur Andersen who abetted its concealment. The

recent shredding of documents by both Enron and Andersen personnel shows how much they don’t want us to know about their irresponsible and possibly illegal actions.

This hearing properly focuses on the failures of government regulation and oversight which permitted or failed to detect the company’s questionable dealings, the mounting losses, and the resulting financial collapse.

While we must identify those regulatory shortcomings and propose the necessary remedies, it is very important, I believe, not to

imply that they bear the primary responsibility for Enron’s disastrous collapse. In my view, that blame and shame belong first and

foremost to the Enron officers and directors who devised, approved,

and then concealed these unwise and unsound financial schemes;

and, second, to the Andersen auditors who abetted them.

These were not a few honest corporate mistakes. They appear to

be a multitude of deliberate actions taken over several years to

maximize profits—nothing wrong with that—but also to cover up

losses, evade taxes, enrich company insiders, and then deceive employees, stockholders, and regulators.

These corporate misdeeds have caused enormous damage to

thousands of Enron employees. It is heartbreaking to read about

the honorable, hard working Americans who have lost their jobs,

their retirement savings, and their life’s security, and who also

were lied to by Enron’s top management about the company’s actual condition.

Enron’s investors have lost over $80 billion from the stock’s collapse. Like the employees, they didn’t know about the company’s

concealed dealings, 881 offshore accounts, successive disasters, and

mounting debt. Enron’s top executives certainly knew. They unloaded over $1 billion of their stock before its collapse.

24

Someone who should have known about Enron’s true financial

condition, and who was responsible for telling everyone else about

it was the supposedly independent auditor, Arthur Andersen. I

know something about auditing from my 4 years as Minnesota’s

State Auditor. The auditor exists and is paid for one essential purpose: To assure everyone else that a company is reporting its financial condition completely, honestly, and accurately.

Whatever the complexities of corporate transactions, the auditor

has one simple standard: The truth. Is the client telling the truth

and all of the truth? Everyone else in our economic system, financial institutions, capital markets, investors, and other companies,

all rely upon the auditor’s ability and integrity. There is mounting

evidence that Arthur Andersen in this instance violated that trust.

In 1997, the auditors reportedly determined that Enron’s stated

earnings of $105 million were $51 million too high. Nevertheless,

Andersen agreed to invoke a materiality provision and signed off

on $105 million as Enron’s reported earnings. That is deceitful, dishonest, and wrong. And no one needs an accounting manual to

know it.

Last October, when Enron reported a third-quarter loss of $618

million, it also disclosed that it had overstated its profits by nearly

$600 million during the prior 5 years. Enron’s CEO also mentioned

that the company’s value had declined by $1.2 billion as a result

of its deals with certain partnerships.

Those disclosures precipitated the stock’s collapse, and at the

time both Enron and Andersen employees were reportedly shredding documents.

If time permitted, Mr. Chairman, I would present more damning

evidence. However, I also want to address the inadequacies in government rules, disclosure requirements, and oversight which permitted and then failed to detect these egregious abuses.

I believe that this and subsequent hearings must investigate the

following matters: In 1993, the Chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, just before her departure, persuaded

that board to exempt energy futures from its regulation and oversight. Shortly after her departure, that Chairwoman joined Enron’s

board of directors.

Then 2 years ago, when Congress was updating these commodity

regulations and oversight responsibilities, Enron reportedly lobbied

aggressively and successfully to keep energy financial transactions

exempted from any government regulation or oversight. William

Rainer, then the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading

Commission, testified that he was ‘‘deeply concerned’’ about exempting energy trades from regulation, because those dealers had

no one else regulating them, whereas the dealers in financial derivatives were still subject to other Federal financial regulation.

His warning went unheeded and proved to be prophetic.

Recently, Charles Bowsher, who served as the Comptroller General of the United States from 1981 to 1996, observed, ‘‘Money allowed the Enron leadership to come to town. If you look back over

the last 5 years, what they did get was no oversight.’’

In another area, then-Chairman of the Securities and Exchange

Commission, Mr. Levitt, tried repeatedly and courageously to pass

legislation that would prohibit an auditor from both conducting the

25

annual independent audit and also providing extensive accounting

services. Andersen pocketed $52 million from that dual role in its

last reported year. Yet, the accounting industry has strongly opposed this and other proposed reforms.

And now the person who led the industry’s successful opposition

has been appointed by President Bush to chair the Securities and

Exchange Commission. Addressing an accounting industry conference, the new chairman lamented that previously the SEC had

not been a ‘‘kinder and gentler place for accountants,’’ but that

would change. Henceforth, he told them, the SEC will have a ‘‘continuing dialogue and partnership with the accounting profession,

and we will do everything in our power to evidence a new era of

respect and cooperation.’’ Unfortunately, what is needed now is a new era of higher standards and stricter accountability for the accounting industry. Financial relationships which compromise auditors’ independence should

be prohibited. Existing peer reviews in which firms exonerate each

other must be replaced with a strong, independent governing

board. That board or another independent entity must regularly review and update existing audit standards and the generally accepted accounting principles which comprise them. And neither the

standards nor the principles nor the enforcement of them should be

adjudicated by Congress.

If these shortcomings are not swiftly remedied, there will be

more Enrons, not in the sense of companies failing, which is an unpleasant but inescapable feature of capitalism, but in the sense

that these failures are caused by mistakes and misdeeds previously

hidden or misreported. This oversight laxity benefits a relatively

few but well-connected corporate cowboys, who want to play fast

and loose with other people’s capital and the people they pay to lie

with them. But it is terribly harmful to everyone else in this country, the millions of businessmen and businesswomen, company employees, and investors whose livelihoods depend upon an honest

and reliable economic system. It is our responsibility to ensure that

system.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Dayton.

I want to thank all my colleagues on the Committee for their

opening statements. I appreciate them. As Chairman of the Committee, I am proud of them. I think what is reflected here is a

shared sense of outrage about what happened as we know it now

in the Enron scandal and a shared desire to end this investigation,

whenever we conclude it is ended, with a series of proposals for reform that will do as best as we can to ensure that the Enron scandal or anything like it never happens again.

So I appreciate very much what was said in reflection of the experience and the insight that is here on the Committee, and it

gives me confidence that the goal that all of us have, which is to

conduct a rigorous, nonpartisan investigation producing concrete

proposals for reform, will be accomplished.

We will go now to our witnesses. Mr. Levitt and Mr. Turner,

thanks very much for your patience as this Committee begins what

I have described as a long journey, an important journey ahead of

us. Arthur Levitt, we couldn’t have a better witness to start this

26

1The prepared statement of Mr. Levitt appears in the Appendix on page 75.

off than yourself. You worked on Wall Street. You were the chairman of the American Stock Exchange, worked as chairman of the

New York City Economic Development Corporation. In an unusual

chapter of your life, you owned the Roll Call newspaper here on

Capitol Hill, but then most directly and significantly related to

these matters, for 8 years, from 1993 to 2001, you were the Chair

of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Lynn Turner, a background in education and in business accounting, served for 3 years as chief accountant of the Securities

and Exchange Commission during the time that Arthur Levitt was

chairman.

I would say, as you have heard these statements, that I appreciate very much that both of you are here. There are several investigations of Enron going on. They are fact-intensive. We have

begun one ourselves, and those are going on both in Congress and

in prosecutorial offices around the country. But it seemed to me

that as we started our investigation, we would benefit greatly from

having you two and the expert witnesses on the panel to follow, if

you will, to take us up to the mountaintop and, based on what we

know about Enron and what happened to it today, help us understand the facts as we know them, looking backward, but also give

us some guidance as we begin our investigation as to what the

most critical questions are we should ask and perhaps even suggest

to us what you would guess based on your considerable experience

some of the answers to those questions might be.

So, with that, and our thanks, I now welcome the testimony of

Arthur Levitt.

TESTIMONY OF HON. ARTHUR LEVITT, JR.,1 FORMER

CHAIRMAN, U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Mr. LEVITT. Mr. Chairman, Senator Thompson, and Members of

the Committee, thank you for the invitation to share my thoughts

on the failure of Enron and its implications for our financial markets.

Today, there is an emerging crisis of systemic confidence in our

markets. What has failed is nothing less than the system for overseeing our capital markets. I do think we have an opportunity to

repair trust in those on whom investors depend, and in the process,

trust in the numbers that are the backbone of our markets. But our

response must be comprehensive. Healthy and resilient financial

markets depend on the accountability of every single one of its key

actors—managers, auditors, directors, analysts, lawyers, rating

agencies, standard setters, and regulators.

Enron’s collapse did not occur in a vacuum. Its backdrop is an

obsessive zeal by too many American companies to project greater

earnings from year to year. When I was at the SEC, I referred to

this as a ‘‘culture of gamesmanship’’—a gamesmanship that says it

is OK to bend the rules, to tweak the numbers, and let obvious and

important discrepancies slide; a gamesmanship where companies

bend to the desires and pressures of Wall Street analysts rather

than to the reality of the numbers; where analysts more often overlook dubious accounting practices and too often are selling potenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
27

tially lucrative investment banking deals; where auditors are more

occupied with selling other services and making clients happy than

detecting potential problems; and where directors are more concerned about not offending management than with protecting

shareholders.

Any reforms must recognize the importance of the gatekeepers in

safeguarding the interests of investors and the fundamental need

to preserve and enhance those gatekeepers’ independence. Certainly these steps, or any steps, are not a panacea, but we have got

to begin to reinvigorate the financial checks and balances that over

the years, as a result of nothing less than a cultural change, has

eroded in America.

First, we must better expose Wall Street analysts’ conflicts of interest. For years, we have known that analysts’ compensation is

tied to their ability to bring in or support investment banking

deals. In early December, with Enron trading at 75 cents a share,

12 of the 17 analysts who covered Enron rated the stock either a

hold or a buy.

Two years ago, I asked the New York Stock Exchange and the

National Association of Securities Dealers to require investment

banks and their analysts to disclose clearly all financial relationships with the companies they rate. That rulemaking—still not finalized—should go further and mandate that analysts disclose how

their compensation is affected by their firm’s investment banking

relationships. And Wall Street’s major firms—not its trade group— need to take immediate steps to reform how analysts are compensated.

As long as analysts are paid based on banking deals that they

generate or work on, there will always be a cloud over what they

say. Analysts also should not be allowed to trade the stock of any

company for which they have issued a recommendation in the last

30 days.

Second, company boards, unhappily, fail to confront management

with tough questions. Stock exchanges, as a listing condition,

should require at least a majority of the directors on company

boards to meet a strict definition of independence. That means no

consulting fees, use of corporate aircraft without reimbursement,

support of director-connected philanthropies, or the kinds of corporate seductions that are present in all too many board rooms in

this country. In Enron’s case, at least three so-called independent

board members would have been disqualified under this test of

independence.

Third, many accounting rules need to be updated to better reflect

changing business practices to give investors a better understanding of the underlying health of companies.

Because the Financial Accounting Standards Board is funded

and overseen by accounting firms and their clients, its decisions

have become agonizingly slow. This well-meaning group must defend itself as well from congressional pressure, which is often applied when powerful constituents hope to undermine a rule that

might hurt their rulings. FASB’s funding should be secured not

just through the accounting firms and the corporations for whom

they establish standards, but also a number of market participants

from the stock exchanges, to banks, and to mutual funds.

28

The Financial Accounting Foundation, which chooses FASB

members, should be composed entirely of the best qualified people,

the people with the best judgment, not merely those who neatly

represent constituent interests. I have never favored constituent

boards and I think the way this board is structured really defies

the kind of standard setting that is cried out for in this situation.

The FASB should then be able to focus more on getting the standards right and avoiding delays and compromises that ill serve investors.

I will turn briefly to probably the most urgent area of reform.

Like no other, the accounting profession has been handed an invaluable but a fragile franchise. From this Federal mandate to certify financial statements, the profession has prospered greatly. But

as an edict for the public good, this franchise is only as valuable

as the public service it provides and as fragile as the public confidence that gives it life.

It is well past time to recognize that the accounting profession’s

independence has been compromised. Two years ago the SEC proposed significant limits on the types of consulting work an accounting firm could perform for an audit client. An extraordinary

amount of political pressure was brought to bear on the Commission. We ended up with the best possible solution, given the realities of the time. I would now urge, as a minimum, that we go back

and reconsider some of the limits originally proposed, namely, a

prohibition on the auditor designing or installing information technology systems and performing the internal audit.

Auditors, I believe, should also be barred from consulting on precisely how to structure transactions, such as the kinds of special

purpose entities that Enron engaged in. This type of work only

serves to help management get around the rules.

I also believe that the audit committees, not company management, should pre-approve all other consulting contracts with the

audit firm. Such approvals should be granted rarely and only when

the audit committee decides that a consulting contract is in the

shareholders’ best interests.

And last, I propose that serious consideration be given to requiring companies to change their audit firms, not just the partners,

every 5 to 7 years to ensure that fresh and skeptical eyes are always looking at the numbers.

More than 3 decades ago, Leonard Spacek, a visionary accounting industry leader, stated that the profession could not survive as

a group, obtain the confidence of the public unless, as a profession,

we have a workable plan of self-regulation. Yet all along the profession has resisted meaningful oversight. Rarely, of all the groups

that the Commission oversees, has this group ever spoken of the

public interest.

We need a truly independent oversight body that has the power

not only to set the standards by which audits are performed, but

also to conduct timely investigations that cannot be deferred for

any reason, and the ability to discipline accountants. All of this

needs to be done with public accountability, not behind closed

doors.

To preserve its integrity, this organization cannot be funded in

any way by the accounting profession. The rise of the baby-boomer

29

1The prepared statement of Mr. Turner with an attachment appears in the Appendix on page

78.

generation, changing retirement patterns and markets that sometimes defied the laws of gravity brought more and more first-time

investors into our markets. These are our friends. These are our

neighbors, whose hopes and aspirations became inextricably linked

to the health, the resiliency of our markets.

We assault those dreams if company executives sell out our

shareholder faith and if those purporting to be independent are

anything but. Enron, like every other financial failure before it,

proves that investors bear the ultimate cost. It is time to repair

what has been lost.

Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Levitt, for an excellent

statement. Mr. Turner.

TESTIMONY OF LYNN E. TURNER,1 FORMER CHIEF

ACCOUNTANT, U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, Senator Thompson, and Members of

the Committee, Enron highlights two issues. The first is that accounting standards are meaningless unless fully complied with and

enforced through a rigorous, unbiased, and independent audit. The

process needs to be improved so as to yield more timely and higher

quality standards. That is our accounting standard setting process.

But keep in mind that no matter how quickly information is reported to the public, or what information is reported, if it is inaccurate its value is lost. Even worse, bad information leads to counterproductive decisions.

To the first issue, we know that under the existing rules, Enron’s

financial statements should have presented a clearer picture than

when they were first presented to investors. Based on filings the

company made with the Securities and Exchange Commission in

November of last year, there were four instances of non-compliance

with existing rules. Three of these errors have resulted in Enron

restating its financial statements for improperly recording an approximately $1.2 billion in additional equity; the company failing to

book audit adjustments, decreasing income by $51 million or 48.6

percent of the reported net income of $105 million in 1997, as we

already heard from Senator Dayton; and the company failing to

consolidate or include the numbers, including debt, from partnerships commonly referred to as special purpose entities in Enron’s

financial statements.

These special purpose entities, or SPEs, are typically designed

for a specific transaction. SPEs come in various forms, including

partnerships like Enron established, corporations, or even trusts.

SPEs are used for many purposes such as financing buildings or

equipment, raising capital by transferring receivables, and providing capital to a bank that has troubled loans that are shifted out

at the bank. While SPEs are sometimes used for legitimate business purposes, they are also used to hide liabilities away from the

unwary investor.

SPEs usually involve at least four parties when they are set up:

The company who sets it up, called the sponsor, in our case Enron;

30

the SPE itself, as you have read about in the paper, with names

like LJM1, Chewco or Jedi; a lender to the SPE, who is willing to

finance its activities; and an investor from the outside who will

own the SPE. In a nutshell, the sponsor establishes the SPE which

in turn acquires or builds an asset. The funding is provided by the

lender who in turn may look to the sponsor for some form of support for the loan such as a guarantee or credit enhancement.

The SPE is owned by an independent investor who puts in, in

the form of equity, at least 3 percent of the amount of capital needed to acquire the asset. The debt of the lender is then paid back

through lease payments or securitization of the SPE’s assets. There

is an expanded discussion of SPEs in my written statement. I

would be happy to respond later to any questions you might have.

The fourth question raised with respect to the financial statements of Enron involves the adequacy of the disclosures, the transactions Enron entered into with related parties such as SPEs. The

description and discussion of these related party transactions are

significantly greater in detail in the November 2001 filings than

had previously been disclosed. One can only ask if now, why not

before?

New accounting rules were not needed to prevent the restatements of Enron’s financial statements or to improve the quality of

some of its disclosures. Compliance with and enforcement of the accounting rules that have been on the books for years would have

given investors a timely and more transparent picture of the trouble the company was in. And the security rules also currently require disclosures that are intended to give the investor an opportunity to look at the company ‘‘through the eyes of management.’’ While Enron has correctly been described as a business failure,

in the end it was also a failure that the audited numbers did not

report the true economic condition of the company in an accurate

or timely manner to the investors. To correct this lack of compliance with accounting standards I urge you to consider the imperative need for an effective, independent professional oversight body

for the accounting profession that has the following critical elements: It is conducted by an adequately funded organization. Its

members are drawn from the public and not currently practicing

accountants. It has the ability to effectively and expeditiously investigate and then effectively and expeditiously discipline those

who failed to follow the rules. It must have the power to establish

auditing and quality control standards that serve the interests of

investors, especially those when these vary from the interest of the

profession. And it inspects the work of auditors on an ongoing basis

to ensure they have made the investing public, and not the amount

of consulting fees they can generate, their number one priority.

In studying this issue, I would encourage you to consider various

types of regulatory organizations that have already been established, including the NASDR, the National Transportation Board

and the recently created foundation in the United Kingdom.

Let me just briefly mention the second issue, which deals with

accounting disclosures. We need to enhance disclosures regarding

events and transactions that, should they occur, would result in a

company being required to make payments to a third party. We

have now seen this type of meltdown, as we have seen in LongVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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Term Capital Management, in Enron, and those disclosures need

to be made to prevent that in the future.

In addition, greater disclosure should be required of key performance indicators that provide investors with the ability to identify

at an early stage trends in the business that may have predictive

ability about what is going on.

Second, as Chairman Levitt has noted, our standard-setting process for issues such as SPEs has taken longer than it has taken my

children to graduate from high school. If the SEC is to continue to

look to the private sector to set standards, which I do very strongly

support, then the SEC and investors have the right to expect timely resolution of this and other important issues. If the FASB were

unable to rectify the SPE issue by the end of 2002, then I would

urge the SEC to take action.

Third, FASB can accomplish its goal of publishing guidance in a

timely fashion only if unimpeded by the constant lobbying of special interests who seek to slow down its processes with issues that

lack relevance and who too often run to our government to seek its

intervention in order to keep investors in the dark about the numbers.

Fourth, the FASB’s emerging task force is comprised entirely of

representatives of industry and the accounting profession and lacks

representatives from the investing public and community. Its mission does not mandate standards that result in the most transparent reporting for investors. In fact, it has at times seemed to be

more intent on grandfathering poor accounting from the past. This

should change.

And finally, one of the stark realities the FASB has faced in the

past when setting standards is that before the ink dries, the investment banking community and accountants are joining forces to find

ways to structure transactions, just as we have seen in the Enron

case, to get around new rules. It is time to get away from this mentality and a good starting point would be to prohibit auditors from

designing and structuring transactions that result in less rather

than more transparency for investors.

Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Turner, for a very helpful

statement. We are going to go around now and have 7 minutes for

each Senator to ask you questions.

I wanted to start with a broader baseline question, if I can, Mr.

Levitt, and put it in this context: Congress and, in fact, State legislatures, etc., all over the country pass laws which are aimed at encoding our best aspirations for our behavior, encouraging good behavior and prohibiting and ultimately punishing bad behavior. Notwithstanding that, human nature being what it is, people will violate those laws.

So as you look at what we know now about the Enron collapse,

which we now call the Enron scandal, is this one of those situations

where these folks were just going to do what they did regardless

of what the law was? Or is it a situation where we can now look

back and say if the laws had been different, perhaps—as your

opening statement indicated—self-regulation of professions had

been different, if the agencies had had more authority, we could

have prevented the collapse of Enron? Or we certainly could have

32

prevented some of the damage that was done to the thousands of

employees and investors who lost their life savings?

I think you understand what I am asking. If the laws and agencies were better prepared, could we have protected a lot of the people who were hurt by Enron’s collapse?

Mr. LEVITT. I have thought about that very question many times,

and I think it is another case of the nail in the shoe of the horse.

Any of the elements around the rating agencies, the standard setters, the regulators, the board, the analysts, the auditors, at different points in time could have blown the whistle, could have

turned up what a sham this really was.

But these things, I do not think, happen in a vacuum. The fact

that any one of them might have been able to do it says something

about the confluence of all of them in this unhappy event, which

I believe occurs only when there is a kind of cultural economic erosion created by a business community that is highly competitive,

certainly a desirable characteristic, but where some of them begin

to push toward the lines, and go over the line, others cannot afford

not to follow. And almost everybody else is playing catch up.

And when you have an incidence of guile of this magnitude, playing catch up just is not enough.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Of course, one of the functions or effects

of law often is to effect the kind of culture that you have talked

about. I think in one sense that comes to mind we have done that

with regard to the environment over the years. We have changed

the ethic out there so that a lot of what used to pass as business

as usual now does not, and it does not require law everywhere. Potential polluters are cleaning up on their own. So part of the question is can we change the ethic that you have described quite correctly by what we do here?

Mr. LEVITT. Absolutely, you can change behavior. You can begin

to get lots of those of us in this game to focus on it differently, to

deal with our responsibilities differently. Right now this event has

been a clarion call to America’s boards of directors. Whether they

stay with it depends on whether you can be focused in terms of a

direction which will encompass the elements that led to this background. And they are very broad.

To focus merely on the auditors I think would be a mistake. This

goes far beyond that.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I agree. That is one of my hopes for this

investigation and the others that are occurring, that by trying to

tell the story—and obviously we are being assisted greatly by the

media at this point—about what happened with Enron, we create

a fact situation, an exposure, that presumably will alter the ethic

as well. And then it is up to us and the professional groups that

are out there, in terms of self-regulation, to encapsule that ethic as

we go forward.

You talked in your opening statement about the importance of

shoring up the independence and resolve of the gatekeepers which

keep our markets honest—and, of course, I agree with you—the

auditors, the analysts, the corporate directors, and the folks who

set accounting standards.

I want to ask you, as a former Chairman of the SEC, about what

its role is. Because I would guess that most investors, average inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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vestors, assume that it is the Securities and Exchange Commission

that is the watchdog that makes sure that disasters like Enron do

not occur. So I would like to ask you to give us a baseline here

about what the SEC’s role is in the system of gatekeepers guarding

the integrity of the markets. And tell us if you think there is anything that should be done, particularly in the light of what we

know about Enron now, to alter that role?

Mr. LEVITT. The SEC’s role is multifaceted. It ultimately, I believe—and every chairman will view this from a different perspective. I think the most important constituent that this government

agency has is America’s individual investors. Nearly all of you have

commented on confidence in our markets, and preserving that confidence by protection of the American investor is the primary goal

of the SEC.

It is done in many different areas. The Commission has the responsibility for maintaining markets where competition is both fair

and fierce. They have the responsibility for overseeing the standard-setting process which we delegated to the FASB. We have the

responsibility that our regulation is based not on merit regulation

but on full and on fair disclosure. And in that connection, we monitor thousands of filings every year. We have the responsibility

when the system fails, when fraud enters into the picture, of bringing enforcement action.

Those are the multitude of responsibilities. Now I have learned

through years in the private and public sector that to expect any

government agencies to operate so comprehensively that they can

eliminate all fraud and deception simply will not work. The SEC

and investor protection in the United States is determined by a

trilogy of private rights of action, of self regulation, and of the

SEC’s enforcement arm. Any one of those three could not do it

alone.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I believe my time is up. There is a question that maybe someone else will ask—and perhaps we can talk

about it another time—which is whether there is a larger role here

for the SEC, including as I gather occurs—and I am not proposing

this, I am raising it. I gather it occurs in some developed economies

in Europe, for instance, where there is a public auditor. There are

public employees who audit the books of publicly held corporations,

so that they are obviously thoroughly independent and do not have

any of the conflicts that we have seen occur here with regard to

private auditors. I am going to hold on that and just leave the

question with you.

I will now yield to Senator Thompson.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, gentlemen,

thank you for your analysis and suggestions as to what we might

do. It is remarkable the things that are so self-evident that need

to be done have to really hit home to us in the context of a crisis

like this. But now we have the crisis, and perhaps we can do some

things that we should have done a long time ago.

I think you rightfully point out the problem with the gatekeepers

and what seems to be just an inherent conflict of interest for all

of them. I guess a lot of it cannot be avoided. But we have a situation here where the numbers are so great, a tremendous amount

of dollars with so many people dependent on the company making

34

the numbers, the analysts pushing it. And obviously the accountants and the auditors have a great deal of responsibility.

But I guess even more perplexing to me are these outside analysts. We criticize Mr. Lay for touting his own stock. I think the

latest was September 26. Then October 16 Enron posted a loss of

$618 million. And then, as you pointed out, Mr. Levitt, you may be

looking at another date, but as late as October 25, when Enron

stock was in free fall, 15 out of 17 analysts tracking the stock still

had buy or strong buy recommendations, despite the fact that analysts for more than a year were complaining that they could not

figure out how Enron made money. Plus, you had the corporate executives selling stock. Plus, you had the CEO leaving in August.

What in the world were these analysts looking at when they

made these buy recommendations? Was their desire to be deceived

so great that they refused to look at the facts before them? Or were

the transactions so complicated that they just could not figure it

out and went ahead on hope and expectation that things would

work out in the end? What do you think?

Mr. LEVITT. I think that it is a little of all of that. I used to run

a large brokerage firm which had many analysts. And an analyst,

I have found, hates to prove himself wrong. So if an analyst is recommending a stock at 80 and it goes to 60 and 50, boy, it was a

good buy then, it is a better buy now. And sell-side analysis has

become both conflicted—and one of you mentioned the multitude of

conflicts in this whole system. They clearly have been conflicted,

and there is every reason that they might not want to interfere

with an important investment banking client.

Senator, you said something which struck me as being critically

important as we work through this process over the course of coming weeks and months. You said that real scandal is not what is

illegal but what is permissible. And certainly, with respect to analysts and their conflicts which are hidden from public view, that is

one of many examples that responds, that resonates to that statement of yours.

Senator THOMPSON. Can an American investor today depend on

Wall Street analysts?

Mr. LEVITT. I think Wall Street sell-side analysis has lost virtually all credibility. So much of the revenues of firms depend upon

investment banking that the importance of the analyst to acquiring

and maintaining an investment banking relationship becomes a

primary concern.

Senator THOMPSON. And, of course, the average investor certainly cannot analyze these complex financial statements.

Mr. LEVITT. It is difficult.

Senator THOMPSON. So they are basically left with total guesswork in the end, it would seem to me.

With regard to the auditors, it looks to me like one could make

the case that the era of self-regulation should be over. I am not

sure what the alternative would be. Obviously, the SEC would turn

into a different organization, in some respects. But we have these

outside entities now supposedly conducting oversight. I think some

try to do a good job. The Financial Accounting Standards Board, as

you say, are very slow on things such as rules with regard to some

35

of these complex new-type transactions, special purpose entities,

and so forth.

Now, Chairman Pitt and I would appreciate your views for his

recent suggestion for yet another independent entity that perhaps

is financed differently and so forth. What difference that would

make? What do we need to do in that regard? Do we need to continue to try to develop some kind of pristine entity out there that

can oversee these boards, that will finally get it right?

And last, what is SEC’s role in this? As I understand it, since

the 1930’s, the SEC has had the authority to set standards themselves, if you want to step in, if FASB is that slow in doing something that important, why does the SEC not step in?

So two or three or four questions in there for you.

Mr. LEVITT. I think the SEC does have the authority to set

standards. I have found several areas of public policy in which the

political process simply does not work. One is closing military bases

and the other is setting accounting standards. I have just resisted

getting the SEC directly involved in that. In this effort to work toward auditor independence, the pressure on us was so enormous

that if you get to——

Senator THOMPSON. But if you are getting that kind of pressure,

and with your stature and ability to withstand it and resist it,

think of the pressure that these so-called independent boards of

citizens will be getting.

Mr. LEVITT. Well, there is no perfect solution. What I would suggest, however, is a group similar to the POB, which is made up of

some of the finest citizens in our community—— Senator THOMPSON. Who just retired en masse, as I understand.

Mr. LEVITT. But who had such an amorphous mandate and funding by the industry cheerleaders, rather than independent sources,

that they were absolutely impotent. But if you gave a group of that

caliber a firm mandate and the responsibility that only Congress

can give to them to get at documents, to subpoena them, to get at

it not just from the auditors but from the clients as well, because

doing it otherwise is doing half the job. Give them the mandate,

give them the funding.

Will that answer the problem? It is one important link, and it is

one that I believe would begin to reassure the public.

Three years ago if you asked the typical American what he

knows about accountants, they would shrug their shoulders. I went

to my dentist here in Washington about 7 months ago, and before

I began the painful process, the dentist turned to me and said, Arthur, those accountants are really scalawags, are they not? Well,

when dentists begin to understand what accountants are, we have

got a problem.

Senator THOMPSON. Maybe even we might, right? Is that what

you are suggesting?

What do you think about Mr. Pitt’s recommendation?

Mr. LEVITT. I would have to hear more about how the funding

would take place, whether there could be the kind of deferral that

I think has held up processes for years. I would have to know

whether this would be a truly independent group. There are many

more details to be worked out.

Senator THOMPSON. Mr. Turner, do you have ideas on that?

36

Mr. TURNER. I actually commend Chairman Pitt for heading, I

think, in the right direction and trying to pull that all together in

one organization. I think, as Chairman Levitt said, it is a step in

the right direction, and I think it can work if we give it the independent funding and we have a real public board of the nature that

you just heard about.

I think probably there are a lot of details to still hear about that

we do not know. From what we have seen, I would say we probably

have advanced the ball out of the end zone and up to about the 30,

and we have probably still got about 70 yards to go.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. A very seasonally appropriate metaphor.

So you have told us what dentists think about accountants. What

do you think accountants think about dentists?

Mr. TURNER. My wife is a dentist.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So you want to recuse yourself. Senator

Levin.

Senator LEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to press you a little bit further on the Pitt proposal

because it has been severely criticized, it seems to me. When we

have a former U.S. Comptroller General and head of the GAO who

is resigning apparently in protest in a mass resignation, as I understand, it is intended to be a protest to this new Pitt proposal

because it does not have the features of independence which you

both proclaim are so important. That has got to resonate a bit with

us.

So I would like to press you a little bit further frankly on that

issue. I know there are a lot of details still to be unveiled, but from

what you know of the Pitt proposal, does it have the characteristics

of an independent oversight body that has the power, in your

words, not only to set the standards by which audits are performed

but to conduct timely investigations that cannot be deferred for any

reason, and to discipline accountants? From what you know, does

it meet that standard?

Mr. LEVITT. If you had asked me that question a year ago, I

probably would have answered in the affirmative. The environment

today calls for very different remedies, very different actions. A

year ago had you asked me whether I felt a legislative solution was

desirable, I would have said no because of the unintended consequences. Today I would answer that in the affirmative.

You have to be, and I do not have to tell you because you often

are in a situation where a crisis erupts right underneath you. And

you have got to come out with an instant response. The press is

at you, the legislature is harassing you. The world at large is demanding an action. I think in those instances perhaps the first action is not as thoughtful as it could be.

So I think that we have got to put a lot more teeth into the proposal than the initial proposal would appear to have come out.

Senator LEVIN. You are talking about the initial proposal of Mr.

Pitt?

Mr. LEVITT. The initial Pitt proposal I think needs more teeth.

Frankly, I need to see more about how it will be implemented.

Senator LEVIN. As you would approach it, which is now legislatively, as I understand it, that issue of having an independent

37

board oversee the auditors to make sure that there are, in fact,

teeth, as you put it, who would select the members of that independent board? What should we look at? Should it be selected by

the SEC? Should we try to set forth some kind of representation

of various kinds of backgrounds and experiences? Give us some

hint. Who, first, would make the appointment?

Mr. LEVITT. Every time I have gone down the road of selecting

boards—and I have done this many times and I worked out a formula—I have always regretted it. There is no perfect way of doing

it.

I certainly think that the SEC would be in a good position to

start the ball rolling. And I know that Chairman Pitt has great

confidence in the members of the POB. I think the POB might be

a logical starting point for this. I have no doubt that Chairman Pitt

will be in consultation with Mr. Bowsher, who is recognized for integrity and probity and understanding of these issues. He has the

public’s confidence.

Senator LEVIN. The Federal Accounting Standards Board, FASB,

as you pointed out, has had tremendous pressures placed upon it

and has not moved quickly in terms of the adoption of accounting

standards. For instance, what should be on the balance sheet, what

should be off the balance sheet. This is not the discipline side,

which we have just discussed, but the standards as to what accountants should go by in making accounting decisions.

How would you change FASB to give it greater independence, an

independent source of financing, and to represent, for instance, the

investing public which has not been represented and to overcome

other kinds of shortfalls? Should that be looked at legislatively?

How do we go about that?

Mr. LEVITT. I believe that the FASB must be—the structure of

it which is, their members are chosen by a constituent board made

up of the securities industry, the accounting profession, a whole

group of people not known necessarily for competence, although

they are headed by a very effective leader, but known because of

whom they represent. So I think the way the board is chosen

should be reconsidered.

The fact that the board is funded by the very firms for whom

they set standards, who often come back to them and say if you are

going to set this standard we are going to cut off your funding.

That is wrong. We have got to change their funding.

But ultimately, I think the SEC must get a little bit more involved in terms of being ready themselves to create a standard in

the event that FASB is too slow to do their job. It is not something

that I think is a comfortable position for the Commission to be in,

but I see no other way around it.

Senator LEVIN. As you know, Mr. Levitt, I proposed a bill about

10 years ago which would have required stock options be treated

the same way in company tax returns and in their earnings statements. Now they are allowed to treat them differently, not show

them as an expense in their earnings statements, and therefore

give a very different impression, a much more positive impression

of the company in terms of its earnings and profits, at the same

time taking a tax deduction in their tax returns.

38

What is your reaction to that? Should we change that? Treat

them one way or the other, but to treat them consistently? So that

when executives get these huge amounts of stock options—which

resulted, in part, by the way, in Enron being able to show itself as

being highly profitable—that they have got to then reflect it on the

books the same way they reflect it on their income tax returns so

that investors and stockholders understand that those options are

a cost to the company?

Mr. LEVITT. I believe that clearly options have great value or we

would not have seen the lobbying effort that we saw when this

issue came up. During my first 4 months at the Commission, I had

a policy of seeing anyone that wanted to see me. I spent nearly half

my time talking to the business community that objected to that

treatment, partially correctly because at that point the board was

unable to establish a way of creating a value for those options.

I look back upon that period now and say that my greatest mistake was not pushing FASB harder to do that. Right now we have

the International Accounting Standards Board ready to go down

that road where international standard setters are doing that very

thing. So I would be, in general, supportive of your recommendation, and I regret that I was not more aggressive in that area when

I was at the Commission.

Senator LEVIN. Thank you. Thank you for your service, as well.

Just in closing, I will point out that in the October 1999 issue

of the magazine that is put out by the chief financial officers, the

so-called CFO Magazine, they handed out awards for the finest in

finance. One of their winners was the chief financial officer of

Enron, Arthur Fastow, who was applauded for developing ‘‘remarkably innovative financing’’ techniques. [Laughter.]

That is what we are investigating right now, but there is a lot

of work to be done in terms of both setting independent standards

and making sure that the accountants themselves are held accountable to those standards. That is going to require a lot of action on

our part and I think your support for that kind of legislative action

here today is really critical.

Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Levin. Senator Collins.

Senator COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Levitt, it is

nice to see you once again and to hear your testimony.

I have a particular concern for the small investor who relied on

a strong buy recommendation from a sell-side analyst, who relied

on a system that let the investor down totally, and then bought

Enron stock for a retirement savings or for any other purpose. In

that regard, I want to go back to the issue that Senator Thompson

raised about the conflicts of interest that affect the analysts.

We allow retail brokerage firms to earn enormous sums of money

underwriting the securities of companies about which they are expected to give objective and disinterested advice to their clients.

That seems to me to be an inherent conflict of interest.

When you look at Enron’s case, if you look at the recommendations of the sell-side analysts, most of them stayed with a buy or

a strong buy recommendation. By contrast, however, the indeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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pendent analysts were telling their subscribers through the fall to

dump their Enron stock.

I think it is very significant that the two brokerage houses that

did downgrade Enron were those that had fewer ties to Enron or

its potential merger partner. By contrast, the firm that advised

Dynergy in merger negotiations, which stood to make a large sum

of money had the merger gone through, rated Enron a strong buy

throughout the fall. So it seems to me that the whole system is just

rife with conflicts of interest that make it very difficult for the

small investor to rely on the advice of the analysts.

Now you have mentioned that you think we need greater disclosure. Is something beyond the disclosure of business relationships

needed?

Mr. LEVITT. I would be very reluctant to go beyond that. The tensions that exist in our society between legitimate business interests

and what is a conflict, I find is best resolved by embarrassment

and humiliation rather than by rulemaking and legislation, unless

it becomes so pernicious and so obscure that it cannot come to the

public’s attention.

The analysts’ problem is, I think, on the margin of what went

wrong at Enron. I think it is an important problem. I think there

are, because it goes way beyond Enron, and I think the way to deal

with it would be to disclose much more clearly when they have a

conflict and see to it that they cannot trade in the stock that they

are recommending for a longer period of time. I think it is unfortunate that the self-regulating organizations have not yet gotten to

this. It has been 2 years since we talked to them about it. I think

that is the way to deal with them.

They are not, in my judgment, really at the core of this. The core

of this, we are talking about boards, we are talking about auditors

and how they are supervised. We are talking about regulators and

standard setters and how they work together.

Senator COLLINS. Let me move to one of the core issues that you

just mentioned and ask you and Mr. Turner your opinion. Mr.

Turner, you mentioned briefly in your statement that in 1997 Andersen wanted Enron to make a change that would have reduced

Enron’s annual income from I think it was $105 million to $54 million. Despite Enron’s refusal to make that change, Andersen nevertheless approved and certified its financial statements. Yet, later

on, that $51 million was part of the $591 million adjustment that

Enron made last November. Had Andersen held its ground we

might not have gone down the road that has led us to these hearings today.

I asked the CFO of a large non-profit entity in Maine how this

could have happened. And his response to me was: ‘‘Oh, that is

easy. Whenever we get an audit finding that we do not like, we sit

down with our auditors and we negotiate what the findings are

going to be.’’ I must say I was surprised to learn this and his assumption that

this is very common. Should not the auditor be reporting to the

audit committee and not to the managers of the entity, whether it

is a for-profit corporation or a non-profit group?

Mr. TURNER. Senator, I could not agree with you more, and I

have been out there as an audit partner on hundreds of these auVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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dits myself, and I think your observation is right on point. A couple

of years ago there was a very prestigious panel of businessmen that

came out and said we really need to create a system where the

auditor does, in fact, report to the audit committee directly. I think

if we can get it to where it is the audit committee who turns

around and engages the auditor, if it is the audit committee who

turns around and pre-approves any consulting contracts so that

they can find whether or not these really do benefit the shareholders, I think that would be a tremendous help.

At the Commission we have seen time and time again, including

some of the cases that were cited on Mr. Torricelli’s board, where

the auditors actually identified the issue. It was not that they were

bamboozled by the management team. They saw it and they knew

it was there and yet continued to issue the report.

I think they are out there. They are humans. They also know

they are trying to get the consulting. They are trying to serve two

masters. They are trying to serve a management team. I have been

a CFO. They are trying to impress you because they want the next

contract and they know what it takes to get that.

At the same time, they have to serve the investors. That is a

tough job. There is a lot of good people in the industry that do a

good job, but we put them in one of the most difficult jobs you could

be in. I would encourage people to look at tying this more into the

audit committee than the management team.

Senator COLLINS. Thank you. Mr. Levitt, would you like to add

anything to that response?

Mr. LEVITT. No.

Senator COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Collins.

Senator Cleland.

Senator CLELAND. Thank you very much.

Mr. Turner, maybe I am missing something here. There is a lot

of this that is just unbelievable to me. Back in my life as Secretary

of State, I not only was the commissioner of securities but, as I

said, handled the professional licensing boards. These boards were

made up of professionals. They had a staff, they had investigators.

And in the case of the accountancy board in Georgia, it is a very

strong board made up of wonderful professionals, all CPAs. And

they administered the CPA exam, I mean certified public accountant.

What I am hearing here is that somehow, some way the public

interests of accountancy in America has gone by the wayside here.

I cannot believe a lot of what I am hearing, not just in terms of

Enron but in this sense that there is so much conflict of interest,

how in the world do you get a clear audit now? And that the public

is actually dependent on that in its investment decisions.

I think we have just slipped a long way from the public entity,

the public interest here. But there are a lot of good people, the

CPAs around America. You would think that somewhere, some

way, some certified public accountant that was licensed by the

State, that was accountable in a professional way to the public for

their license, and they are all licensed, would stand up and say this

is ridiculous. This violates everything I learned on the first day I

went to accountancy school.

41

I mean, it is hard for me to believe, for instance, that the average

small business person in my State would be treated, as Enron was

treated, by their auditors and accountants. For instance, it has

been alleged that Enron overstated $1.2 billion in shareholder’s eq- uity since 1997, including listing $172 million as an asset instead

of a reduction for the year.

Now, Joseph Berardino, CEO of Arthur Andersen, has stated

that this transaction ‘‘fell below the scope’’ of their audit. Do you

not think any average American who has been subjected to an

audit in this country would have a hard time understanding how

$172 million escaped the notice of an auditor?

Mr. TURNER. That is what my dentist tells me. The answer is

yes. And in fact, while the chairman and I were at the SEC, we

put out some guidelines that said when people are doing these type

of things and they are intentional, it did not matter whether it was

$100 billion or $1 million. For a CPA to be intentionally cooking

the books like this, and for the auditor to pass on it when they

know it is an intentional-type error, and in the $1.2 billion, that

is quite simply Accounting 101. That is black and white, there is

no gray to it. I cannot comprehend that.

The rule that we put in place back in August 1999 would clearly

say that something like this you just can not do.

Mr. LEVITT. Senator Cleland, I would have to call to your attention, as you go through the airport at National or in Atlanta, just

look at the signs on the walls that the accounting firms put up.

They call themselves multi-disciplinary professional firms. If this

was your first day on Earth walking through those airports, and

you were asked what these people did, the last thing in the world

you would say is they had their roots in public auditing.

Senator CLELAND. Yes, I agree. Good point.

By the way, Mr. Levitt, I appreciate your public service. I have

been in hearings where you have testified over the last few years,

and we appreciate all you have brought to the table with your public service. Thank you for your testimony today.

Mr. Turner, one more point here. One of the things I am learning

here, and it is hard for me again to believe that just the average

person or the investor or small business person in my State would

think OK, you have things that are on the books and then whoops,

you have things that are off the books. And it is OK to have things

off the books. They are called special purpose entities.

Do you think the SEC rules should require disclosure of all special purpose entities in order to allow credit rating agencies and

analysts the information to provide sound advice to their clients?

Mr. TURNER. First of all, as a former business executive, I think

those financial statements should, without a doubt, provide clear

transparency with what is going on with the business. And if I am

going to go out and finance something and I am going to have the

obligation to pay it, whether I do it in an SPE or not, that should

be on my financial statements. Otherwise, quite frankly, I am just

lying to my investors, and I think that is a shame.

So I do think the rules need to be quickly changed here to bring

all of these back onto the balance sheet. Let us make the balance

sheets look like the business actually looks like. And to the extent

we need additional disclosure so that someone can read this and

42

understand it, which I clearly do not think the average investor

could in these cases, yes, we need to enhance those disclosures.

Senator CLELAND. I hate to say it, but it sounds like we are having a hard time finding out what ‘‘is’’ is.

Steve Shepherd, the editor-in-chief of Business Week Magazine

has stated, ‘‘Enron was really a systemic failure of all the checks

and balances we have on corporate governance.’’ That is kind of scary. Basically the editor of Business Week Magazine says this is just kind of a failure of the system. There are

a lot of corporations out there. Are we looking at more Enrons, Mr.

Levitt? Do we have such a systemic failure going on here that there

are not checks and balances any more out there?

Mr. LEVITT. I am not certain as to the presence or extent of fraud

in the Enron case, so I cannot say whether that is a factor. And

I certainly have no reason to believe that there is that kind of potential fraud in other companies.

I can say, however, that with respect to managing the numbers,

to massaging the numbers, to deceiving the public, in effect, by

talking about pro forma numbers, earnings after certain charges,

I think that is prevalent throughout the system. And I think the

restatements that we are about to see, that Senator Torricelli mentioned in his chart, that the frequency of these restatements which

have cost America’s investors billions and billions of dollars is a

phenomena that will be on the business pages for the foreseeable

future.

So that Enron’s problems, apart from fraud, are problems that

exist, in my judgment, in many other American companies, some

of them really great companies whose competitive zeal has moved

them to embrace some of the kind of obfuscation that I think represents a systemic problem.

Senator CLELAND. Thank you very much for that very strong testimony. Thank you very much, Mr. Turner.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask unanimous consent for my

opening statement to be put in the record.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Without objection, so ordered.

[The prepared statement of Senator Cleland follows:]

OPENING PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND

INTRODUCTION

I was Georgia’s Secretary of State for more than thirteen years and in my role

as the Georgia Commissioner of Securities, I was charged with administering the

provisions of the Georgia Securities Act including the registration of securities

issuers, the licensing of broker-dealers, stockbrokers and investment advisers. I was

also responsible for the disciplining of the professionals involved in the offer and

sale of securities to Georgia residents. During my tenure I insisted on a vigorous

enforcement program utilizing administrative, civil and criminal sanctions that were

available to me under the law. I am concerned that the regulatory agencies have

relaxed their monitoring and oversight functions without an increase in a focus on

strong enforcement of our securities laws. A strong regulatory enforcement program

and an expedited criminal prosecution of persons willfully engaging in fraud and deceits in our markets will provide a major deterrent against financially related misconduct.

The securities markets are, and must continue to be, an integral part of our nation’s economy. Unfortunately, the successes experienced in recent years have led

to what appears to be an alarming increase in instances of major fraud and abuse.

These markets exist as a result of the public confidence that we have demonstrated

in the industry’s integrity. Billions of dollars change hands every day on the marVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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kets as a result of a telephone call, head nod or a hand shake. Should this integrity

be replaced with an era of mistrust, this confidence would quickly erode and the

markets would suffer. The public confidence and trust has emanated, in part, from

the confidence our citizens have in the regulatory system that has been in place for

over sixty years.

The market collapse and meltdown of Enron Corporation (‘‘Enron’’) has raised serious doubts and concerns over corporate and regulatory oversight of the securities

markets, even for major corporations whose securities are listed on national exchanges.

I am extremely upset and concerned that Enron was able to conceal financial

practices that were not detected by our financial regulatory systems, our credit reporting agencies and financial analysts. As a result, Georgia’s retirement systems

suffered a loss of about $127,000,000 over the three year period preceding the bankruptcy filing by Enron. Thanks to the diligent work of our Georgia’s analysts and

investment officers, I was pleased to learn that this loss only resulted in a 2/10 of

1% decline in investment earnings over that period and that they were still able to

report a 10.1% return on investment for this period. However, many individuals in

Georgia and around the country suffered real economic hardship.

Based on my review of documents and news reports, I am appalled at the alleged

conduct of certain Enron executives. In my statement today I will outline some of

the major problems that have come to light as a result of corporate conduct and serious financial irregularities engaged in by these officials.

ENRON CORPORATION

In July, 1985 Kenneth Lay (‘‘Lay’’) was appointed chairman and chief executive

officer after Enron was formed from the merger of Houston Natural Gas and

InterNorth, a natural gas pipeline company. In December of 1996 Jeffrey K. Skilling

(‘‘Skilling’’) became Enron’s president and chief operating officer. Kenneth Lay remained as Chairman of the Board.

Enron conducted business as a pipeline company and grew to be a dominant force

controlling major pipelines throughout the United States. During the 1990’s Enron

ventured into the trading of oil, gas and electricity. It was instrumental in the development of an energy trading system utilizing a relative new breed of financial

instruments that allowed them to manage their risk such that they became the

dominant energy trader in the United States. This quick success let Enron to move

away from the traditional energy business into other emerging markets involving

telecommunications, broadband and other Internet related businesses.

Enron maintained its headquarters in Houston, Texas. Its securities were listed

on the New York Stock Exchange and it was required to file reports with the United

States Securities and Exchange Commission (‘‘SEC’’) pursuant to the federal securities laws. In August, 2000 Enron was ranked by Fortune magazine as the seventh

largest company in the United States based on market capitalization. At that time

its common stock was trading in the $90 range, having increased 1,700% since its

first shares were issued in the 1980’s.

On October 16, 2001 Enron reports its first quarterly loss in over 4 years after

taking charges of $1 billion on poorly performing businesses and a $1.2 billion

charge against shareholder’ equity relating to dealings with ‘‘off-balance’’ sheet entities. This disclosure resulted in the announcement of an SEC inquiry.

THE BANKRUPTCY FILING

In June 2001, after questions arose about the validity of Enron’s stock valuation,

the company’s top executives were apparently engaged in a systematic effort to sell

off many of their shares resulting in an estimated $1.1 billion return to these executives. CEO Skilling announced his resignation in August and Kenneth Lay resumed

the position of chief executive officer.

On October 22, 2001 Enron reported a third quarter loss of $618 million and the

SEC announced an inquiry into its operations. On November 8, the company amended and restated its financial reports back to 1997 showing that profits had been

overstated by $586 million. As a result of its financial practices, credit reporting

agencies, financial analysts and the investing public lost confidence in the company

resulting in a total collapse of its business operations and its share value.

Sophisticated financial engineering, risky corporate ventures, overstatements of

asset value and understatement of liabilities forced Enron into bankruptcy on December 2, 2001 in a New York bankruptcy court. This represents the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. At the time of the petition, the assets of the company

were estimated to be about $50 billion and its liabilities approximately $40 billion.

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ENERGY TRADING

Enron engaged in a successful and sophisticated financial trading system involving the trading of energy contracts including oil, gas and electricity. By the development of a state of the art trading environment, Enron was able to engage in massive

bilateral trading contracts that were outside the overview of the SEC or the United

States Commodities Futures Trading Commission (‘‘CFTC’’). The CFTC overview of

such contracts was excluded or exempted as the result of a recent amendment to

the federal commodities futures trading law, even though these contracts are similar

to other futures contracts regulated by the CFTC.

This type trading is risky but apparently necessary in order to provide an open

market in these commodities. For example, by engaging in appropriate risk management techniques a supplier can assure a future market for its products and a user

can assure the availability of the product at an established price. In order to track

supply and demand it is necessary to have state of the art hardware and software

and the personnel resources trained in such trading environments.

Even though energy futures contract trading is a risky business, the meltdown of

Enron was accelerated as a result of action by credit reporting agencies that downgraded them from investment grade to junk status. An energy trading entity will

not be able to remain in the market once they have lost financial integrity and confidence by their trading partners. The disclosure of their serious financial problems,

the lost value in their shares, the off-balance sheet financial engineering and the

decline in the broadband telecommunications business, all came to light much in the

manner of the weather systems in the movie ‘‘The Perfect Storm’’.

ENRON’S QUESTIONABLE CORPORATE, AUDITING AND FINANCIAL PRACTICES

• The use of off-balance sheet transactions involving entities that were formed by,

and controlled by, Enron or its executives, that were created without complying

with Rule 140 of Financial Accounting Standards Board. It has been reported that

certain of these entities were created by Enron executives borrowing funds from

Enron’s bankers using Enron compensating balances and its shares as guarantees.

• Enron failed to disclose the formation of these entities resulting in the failure to

disclose material financial transaction and the understatement of corporate liabilities. This resulted in continued positive ratings by credit rating agencies and financial analysts.

• The use of mark to market evaluation reports of certain Enron assets by these

entities resulted in false and significant valuations of Enron’s assets.

• On October 17, 2001 Enron apparently decides to change plan administrators for

its employee’s 401(k) plan resulting in significant restrictions being placed on

Enron’s employees ability to dispose of their Enron shares. Enron later issued

press releases stating that the lock-down period was from October 29 through November 12, 2001. This lock-down was eventually lifted on or about November 19,

2001 after Enron shares declined approximately 71% to $9.06 per share.

• The downgrading by major credit agencies of Enron’s bonds to ‘‘junk’’ status on

November 28, 2001.

• Enron’s filing and disclosure of materially false financial statements that were relied on by the markets, credit reporting agencies and financial analysts.

• The financial practices engaged in by Enron may have resulted in its executive

employing a device, scheme, or artifice to defraud market investors and engaging

in acts, practices, or a course of business that operates or would operate as a

fraud or deceit upon a purchaser or holder of Enron securities.

• The financial practices engaged in by Enron resulted in omissions to state material facts necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstances under which they are made, not misleading.

• Enron executives sold approximately $1.1 billion of their shares on the market.

As an example, on August 14, 2001, Skillings, Enron’s president and chief executive officer, resigns citing a decline of share price and personal reasons after selling shares for an aggregate value of approximately $17.5 million. The sale and

distribution of Enron shares by its executive officers may constitute the offer or

sale of securities by means of insider information not available to the investing

public. The questions that must be answered regarding these transactions include

what information the executive knew, or should have known regarding the quesVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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tionable financial transactions engaged in by Enron and when did such information become known to each of them.

• The compensation and profits paid to Enron employees engaged in the off-balance

sheet entities.

• The use of market appraisals from affiliated, off-balance sheet entities that resulted in inflated mark to market asset values.

• The use of over-valued and misleading broadband and telecommunications assets

to maintain its bond rating status.

• The failure of the Arthur Andersen auditing team to explore and report on the

questionable financial transactions and accounting practices.

• The destruction of audit records and documents by employees of Arthur Andersen.

• The payment of significant compensation, reported to be $55 million to 500 executives, on the eve of the bankruptcy filing.

• Possible conflicts of interest charges involving Enron, its accountants and consultants and an investment advisor’s employee being a member of the Enron board.

• The untimely and questionable selection of a new plan administrator that resulted

in Enron employees being unable to dispose of their Enron shares for an extended

period of time when the Enron shares were declining in value as a result of newly

reported material changes to Enron’s financial condition.

• The use of plan restrictions limiting the ability of employees to dispose of their

company match shares prior to age 50.

• The SEC oversight and reviews of the filings of public companies.

• The changes in the Commodities Futures Trading Act that exempted or excluded

energy trading futures from CFTC oversight.

• The Enron campaign contributions further reveals the flaws in our system of financing the campaigns of candidates for the Congress, the President, and other

federal officeholders.

THE RISING TIDE OF SECURITIES FRAUD

Top securities watchdogs in the United States have constantly warned investors

that the explosion in the stock market has brought with it a sharp rise in securities

sales fraud and stock price manipulation. The past year or so have proved them to

be correct. At a town meeting in Los Angeles, Former SEC Chairman Levitt cautioned that investors are ‘‘more vulnerable than ever to fraud.’’ This concern continues to be echoed by others who point to a disturbing rise in the level of securities

fraud and allegations.

What is unusual about the increasing evidence of wrongdoing in the stock market

is that shady practices usually go unnoticed in the heady days of a strong bull market. As in the Enron matter, the misconduct is normally uncovered only after a

sharp market drop. This has many in the regulatory community wary about what

they will be facing if we continue to see other Enron type market collapses.

The challenge to government and industry self-regulators in keeping up with the

job of policing a marketplace that is undergoing explosive growth was graphically

illustrated several years ago in Forbes Magazine (‘‘Swindlers’ Paradise’’). Forbes

writer Gretchen Morgenson cautioned that ‘‘greed makes people careless’’ but that

investors ‘‘shouldn’t count on the cops to protect them.’’ In this regard you must also

include the financial market regulators.

Make no mistake about who it is that suffers at the hand of securities fraud. It

is retirees living on fixed incomes, families struggling to make ends meet and save

a little for their children’s education, teachers, factory workers, bankers, and others;

it is, in short, the everyday man and woman who works so hard for every dime they

earn.

The Enron matter, while considerably larger, compares to the losses suffered by

the 8,000 shareholders who collectively lost more than $300 million in the Comparator fiasco. Records reveal that although there were a smattering of well-to-do

investors among the group, for the most part the investors were common folk: Retirees, school teachers, engineers, police officers, small-business owners, and maintenance workers.

Poignant letters from victims of the recent Towers Financial Ponzi scheme—a

scheme which defrauded investors of $460 million—demonstrate the personal hardship and financial ruin that follows in the wake of a securities fraud:

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‘‘This was almost all of [my mother’s] retirement money. She has now obtained a part-time job with Burger King restaurant to supplement her Social Security income. . . .’’

‘‘I am a 69-year-old woman who has been a teacher in the public schools

. . . for most of my adult life. I invested almost all of my life savings,

$112,000. . . . Mr. Hoffenberg has taken away what would have been a

nice retirement income for me. So, as a result, I have returned to teaching

and will probably have do so as long as I am able.’’

‘‘My husband and I were just married when we invested our $12,500 with

Towers, which was the first and only investment we have ever made . . .

In the last two years we have been heartbroken . . . to learn that invitro

fertilization is our only hope for having a child. The $12,500 would have

covered . . . two full attempts at having a child. At this point, we have no

child and no hope of having the money it would take to try. . .’’

Each day, equally devastating cases are brought to the attention of securities regulators, law enforcement officers, and attorneys representing the interests of defrauded investors. Financial fraud is a serious and growing problem that must be

addressed by the United States Congress.

THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT (PSLRA)

As Georgia’s Secretary of State for more than twelve years, I dealt with securities

regulation on a daily basis. It was my role to regulate the offer and sale of securities

to Georgia residents and to license, regulate, and discipline issuers of securities, underwriters, broker-dealers and stockbrokers. However, the monitoring and oversight

of major corporate entities such as Enron was primarily the task of the SEC and

the private bar.

Georgia has long recognized the right of private investors to seek remedies

against those persons selling fraudulent investment products. I have supported an

investor’s right to seek redress through mediation, arbitration and civil litigation.

While we should work to streamline the registration and reporting process, I vigorously opposed, and will continued to oppose, any changes in the federal regulations

that impair the ability of the SEC and state governments to protect its investors

and for the right of investors to use state courts to redress their losses.

I am not yet convinced that the PSLRA will provide sufficient protection to defrauded investors. If the courts ultimately interpret the PSLRA in a way that makes

recoveries under federal law too difficult, state remedies will be the only means for

defrauded investors to redress their injuries.

The Enron collapse may provide the opportunity to determine whether the

changes resulting from PLSRA will streamline procedure without having a detrimental impact on the right of individual investors ability to recover losses from

fraudulent transactions.

CONCLUSIONS

It is my firm belief that the United States Senate must fully explore the Enron

financial collapse in order to present for debate and consideration changes in our

financial and market regulatory programs that will deter the use of illegal and improper financial engineering practices to conceal losses and overstate assets resulting in a market confidence that is bound to collapse.

In this regard I think the United States Senate should carefully consider the following areas:

• A thorough examination of the facts and circumstances surrounding the rise and

fall of Enron with a focus on determining

who knew what regarding the improper financial practices and other material matters relating to the value of Enron shares;

when these facts were known to them; and

whether or not such executive officers or others, knew or should have

known about such facts.

• A regulatory program for accountants, credit reporting rating analysts, and financial analyst that will provide for competency standards, training, conflict standards, and a strong penalty for violations of established standards and fraudulent

practices.

47

• A review of accounting standards used in reporting ‘‘off-balance’’ sheet transaction.

• A thorough review of the destruction of records by Arthur Andersen employees to

determine the destruction time table and whether or not such records were destroyed after notice of subpoenas or in clear anticipation of them.

• A determination about when off-balance sheet transactions should be disclosed to

the SEC, credit reporting rating agencies and financial analysts.

• An overview and examination of current SEC overview and monitoring programs

of entities offering their shares to the public that will be traded on the national

markets.

• An overview of the role of the self-regulatory organizations that are currently in

place to assist the SEC and state regulators in their oversight responsibilities, as

well as a major emphasis on investor education and awareness.

• A review of the PSLRA and the current arbitration requirements, to determine

if the recent amendments are adequate to offer access to the state and federal

courts for recovery in the case of fraudulent activities.

• A review of the disposition of share requirements and restrictions that are placed,

or should be placed, on senior executive officers of major corporations.

• A review of the 401(k) retirement programs to determine what restrictions, if any,

should be placed on employee’s shares by:

regulatory authorities, such as limiting the % ownership of company

shares in their plan or by a requirement that an employee’s shares received in any manner must contain no trading restrictions;

the retirement plan; and

by unofficial employer coercion or representatives.

• While the energy trading industry appears to have survived the Enron collapse,

I think it is appropriate to review energy trading practices involving risk management practices, bilateral futures trading contracts and other sophisticated financial investment tools in order to determine whether or not the public interest requires CFTC or other federal oversight of such trading practices and transactions.

• While I have not heard credible evidence of improper political influence or actions,

I feel that we need a thorough review of the political contributions made by Enron

and its senior officers to candidates from either political party to determine what,

if any, improper influence may have existed as a result of such campaign contributions. The public reaction to such political contributions should be sufficient

for the Congress to reform our campaign financing laws.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Senator Bennett.

Senator BENNETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am having all kinds of reactions to all of this, some of it coming

from my Senate activities, and some of it going back to my business experience. I have never run a company as big as Enron, and

it may be that there is a dividing line somewhere in terms of size.

Just picking a number of issues in the time I have, your suggestion that there be a prohibition of consulting activity in the part

of auditors. In the company I ran, the auditor was enough of a

partner in understanding what we had and where we were, it was

PriceWaterhouse at the time, that I wanted to go to him to get his

advice on certain things I was doing and have him say no, wait a

minute, you cannot do that. No, that would not be a good idea. This

is the better way to structure that. Instead of incurring the extra

expense of going to somebody else and then taking the time to have

the somebody else familiarize himself with our company as well as

PriceWaterhouse was.

It would have been an extra cost that, in terms of the services

to the company, would not have been a value. Now I was not creating any SPEs and so I can have sympathy with the idea that if

48

you are going to create this separate set of transactions you ought

to have an independent group do that and then have your auditor

look over the shoulder. I have no problem with that.

But with the generic sense that we have heard in the past that

says if you are in auditing you should not be in consulting, and

there should be a clear bright line and total separation, out of my

own experience I have a little trouble with that because I think it

does represent, for small and medium-sized firms like the one I

ran, an unnecessary expense. I would like you to comment on that.

And then while we are doing that, make another comment in the

same area, Chairman Levitt, about your suggestion that every 5 to

7 years you change audit firms. I was involved in changing an

audit firm and, quite frankly, it had nothing to do with we want

fresh and skeptical eyes. What happened is that the partner that

we were depending on got transferred. He got promoted. And we

looked at the kind of service we were getting out of the audit firm

and the new people that were put into the Salt Lake office, and we

said we do not think these folks are competent anymore.

Now it was the same Big 5 name on the door, but it was a different partner and a different set of folks come to see us. And we

had a lot invested in the old partner and we were delighted he got

promoted, glad to see him move on up. But we said we have got

to get better service and more competence out of our auditor. And

so we switched from one Big 5 firm to the other.

So these are two related issues that I have raised here, about the

capacity of an accounting firm to add value to a client firm simply

by virtue of the amount of expertise that they bring to the table

and the amount of experience that they have with the firm.

Mr. LEVITT. I started with, I think all of us do, with the assumption that the accounting industry essentially is a private industry

but with a public responsibility. And I am certain that you can

take the position that a business person develops a relationship

with his auditor that is comfortable and trusting.

Senator BENNETT. And synergistic, helpful to the stockholders.

Mr. LEVITT. In many instances, it is helpful to the stockholders.

During our debate on this issue, as we imposed relatively modest

change in this area and backed away from a change that I think

is terribly important, which is to remove IT from the consulting

services that can be performed for the audit client, two arguments

were raised in opposition. One argument that was raised was, and

we had public hearings on this and the heads of the firms testified

to this and I attended hearings of the Banking Committee and the

Energy Committee and I was confronted with the same issues on

the part of members who said Arthur, this is a question of perception. That is all, it is just perception.

And second, where is the smoking gun?

Senator BENNETT. I asked that question.

Mr. LEVITT. As you know, we had a briefing and members of the

Banking Committee attended that briefing. We went over the details of cases that were about to be brought.

Well, I do not think the question about the smoking gun is being

asked any longer. There is an exploding gun and there are smoking

guns yet to explode.

49

With respect to perception, I think it matters enormously in

terms of investor confidence, which is the basis of our markets.

Now if you tell me, Senator, that PriceWaterhouse had the unique

ability to provide a certain kind of consulting service, I would suggest to you that there are only four other firms today. Two of them

have gone out of the business totally. There is someone else out

there who could provide that service at no greater cost, in my judgment.

I think the question, we could debate it at great length, about

the relative value of perception to the relatively modest disruption

to the company. But I can tell you, having been on audit committees and serving on a number of boards, that more and more independent directors are taking the position that it is wrong to hire

a firm for consulting services that is the auditor for that firm. That

it looks bad, it feels bad, and it smells bad. And if that is the case,

whatever modest costs might be involved, I think, is a small price

to pay for restoring public confidence.

Right now we are in a crisis of public confidence.

Senator BENNETT. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Bennett.

Senator Dayton.

Senator DAYTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This degree of separation between us gives me a perspective on the expanse between

a freshman Senator and a Committee Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I feel very close to you, Mark.

Senator DAYTON. I am not even sure we are in the same time

zone.

I want to thank both of you for your very, very distinguished

service and for all you have tried to accomplish. I have to ask first:

Do you feel completely or absolutely, totally vindicated by the

events, which, unfortunately have transpired?

Mr. LEVITT. No, I think this is work in process. I think that what

this Committee does is so important. I know that there are philosophic differences among all of us in terms of how far to go. I am

a great believer in our markets and how they work. I have been

a major beneficiary of that.

But my conviction about public confidence and a system that has

seen a cultural erosion suggests to me that you must be focused in

terms of the few demonstrations that you give that you care about

this issue and setting it right. And there is no rule or regulation

that is going to do it in and of itself. It is going to require continual

attention by an SEC that has the resources to do the job, and by

the legislative process which will see to it that they are on target.

Mr. TURNER. Senator Dayton, I think Senator Lieberman absolutely had it right when he said you are beginning a long journey.

And Senator Thompson had it absolutely on the nail when he said

this is a systemic problem. It is pointed out, probably no better

than the charts that Mr. Torricelli had, and I think Senator

Carnahan highlighted one of many things that it is going to take

to fix this systemic problem.

This is not an issue of vindication. This is an issue of the fact

that I would hope that you will be strong, you will aim high. Someone made the comment let us take you to the mountaintop. I think

when you get to that mountaintop you are going to find out there

50

is about 5,000 green eyeshades on the other side coming over the

top of the hill.

So you have got a big battle ahead of you. I would just urge you

to stick to your guns, stay the course, and let us make this problem

fix. The investors over the last half dozen or so years have lost

close now to $200 billion. When you talk about the cost to a company, and I have been in the same position that Senator Bennett

has in selecting auditors myself, when you start thinking about the

cost to investors in this Nation at $200 billion, and what that does

to our market, and the fact that that market is our crown jewel

that no other country has, and it fuels this economy. We can no

longer sit back and say are you vindicated or not. That is not the

issue. The issue here is sticking with it, staying the course, and

getting this fixed for the American public once and for all.

Senator DAYTON. Could each of you depart from your testimony

and just give us, give the American people, a scorecard. What are

the essential reforms, one, two, three, four, or more, that Congress

must enact, in your view, so that people can have reasonable confidence in the integrity and truthfulness of these reporting systems?

Mr. LEVITT. I believe that the creation of an oversight body for

the accounting profession with the appropriate powers to do the job

of setting auditing standards and having disciplinary ability and

subpoena ability and the ability to examine clients as well as accountants is something that I am now persuaded can only be done

by legislation.

I believe that other issues, such as the standard setting process,

I would hope that could be addressed outside of a legislative framework but with strong legislative persuasion.

I believe, with respect to the analysts, that is something that can

be handled by the New York Stock Exchange and the NASD.

I think the issue of seeing to it that all corporate boards have

a majority of independent directors is something that the Stock Exchange and the NASD can deal with effectively, again with appropriate persuasion.

And I think there are marginal issues such as a 2-year cooling

off period for employees of firms being able to join clients of the

firms, and the question of changing auditors periodically.

I think these do not require a legislative fix, in my judgment.

Mr. TURNER. I agree with the Chairman. I think that we need

to create legislatively an honest to goodness oversight body under

the supervision of the SEC. I do not believe the SEC, in itself, I

do not think I would put it there. I agree with Chairman Pitt in

trying to do something out there with active oversight by the SEC,

though.

I think the need to move forward by the stock exchanges on the

analysts issues and disclosures will help a tremendous amount.

I actually think the business community, too, needs to pay a key

role here. A couple of years ago, on some of the corporate board and

governance issues, there was an outstanding panel chaired by a

couple of very distinguished businessmen and the former Deputy

Secretary of State, John Whitehead, and Ira Milstein, head of

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ommendations that then the Commission and the stock exchanges

and the profession acted on.

And I would hope that we will see some leadership again from

the business community and that they will play a role here, that

it does not need to all be done by Congress, it does not all need

to be done by the SEC. But to the extent that these things do not

get fixed, then I think it would be appropriate, given how you have

had thousands of lives impacted, hurt, I went into a classroom the

other day—— Senator DAYTON. I have to squeeze in one more question.

Help me to assess and evaluate this shredding of documents by

auditors and accountants. My experience with them is that they

are very thorough and factually oriented people. That is their profession. And shredding documents goes against that training; it

may violate their professional standards; it may be illegal.

For them to shred documents despite those inhibitions, says to

me that there must be a huge amount of compelling and damaging

information that they just do not want revealed.

Mr. LEVITT. I do not know exactly what the extent of that may

be, but shredding documents obviously is a red flag to anybody in

an enforcement capacity and is a criminal offense.

Senator DAYTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Dayton. Senator

Voinovich.

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. Most of the questions that I had

have already been answered, but in this room I suspect that we

have representatives of analysts, brokers, mutual fund managers,

auditors, financial consultants, you name it.

Mr. LEVITT. Lawyers.

Senator VOINOVICH. Lawyers. The question that I have is do you

think they get it? What advice would you have to all of the people

that are part of this financial market system that we have in this

country, as to what they ought to be doing right now?

You are saying that we are going to have people on one side and

the other, but what would your candid advice be to some of those

people that are in this room today about the attitude they ought

to take toward this hearing and the ones that we are going to be

having and the new changes that you think need to be made to restore people’s faith in this system. Because if it is not restored, I

believe it is going to have irreparable damage to our financial markets, which have been the mainstay of this country for years and

years, and frankly, impact on their respective pocketbooks.

So I will give you a free shot at advice to all of those that are

here in the room and maybe those that are watching on television.

Mr. LEVITT. What a great question. I think that all of those parties, and I would throw in rating agencies as well to that package

of people who are impacted by this. I would say to them all of us

are in this together. And if there is a systemic problem, and I think

there clearly is, while it may hit company A today, it is going to

hit B, C and D very shortly.

No amount of rulemaking or legislation will ultimately change

human behavior except at the margins. And that those people who

are parties to all of this themselves must consider their behavior

and their attitude toward the public interest, recognizing the imVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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portance of the capital of the profitmaking motive in a capitalistic

society.

But we have to have a system that is trustworthy, and that begins with participants who are trustworthy. And too many elements of this system are not trustworthy today. Too many elements have failed us because of self-dealing and self interest.

And to recognize that right now we are in a crisis mode, but this

will be responded to. But if we do not learn a lesson from this,

which is an enduring lesson, we will be back here. And we will be

back here in ways where the primacy of America’s capital markets

will no longer be assured because too many other areas of the

world are dealing with issues in different ways. And if you lose

trust, you lose everything.

So we are all in this together.

Senator VOINOVICH. Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. I do not think I could say it any better than what

the chairman said, and I think it starts with each and every one

of us. I grew up in the State that Senator Bennett is from and had

a set of wonderful parents fortunately. And I think they made it

clear to me the difference between what is right and what is wrong.

And when I sit in there at the seat, as the CFO, even though the

heat gets turned up at times, and you know it can get hot, you

know if you are in the kitchen you have to make it work.

And I think it starts with all of us. It cannot be done by just the

auditors. There has been a lot of focus on Andersen. It is not just

Andersen. It starts with the management team. Directors and everyone has to contribute here. And it has to be an effort of people.

It cannot just be Congress. It has to be everyone working on this.

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Voinovich. That was a

very important exchange and it does, in my opinion, go to the heart

of what this is all about, this inquiry. As others have said before,

and you have said, there has been a remarkable democratization

of capitalism in our time with average people having the opportunity in this country to buy a piece of the rock through 401(k)’s,

through mutual funds, through stock options, in fact.

And there is, as you said now, a crisis of confidence. I will tell

you what the question is that I get most asked, and I am going to

ask you this and then I am going to thank you for your testimony

and go on to the second panel.

People have been shaken by the Enron story in this sense. The

question they ask me is do you think my 401(k) is OK? The reason

for that is we have now heard of tales of boards of directors that

are not truly independent, of analysts who recommend stocks without understanding the books of the companies they are recommending, of auditors who have conflicts of interest, of regulatory

bodies that—for one reason or another that we will get into as this

investigation goes on—were not there to be the watchdogs that presumably they were supposed to be.

So how would you answer that question if people asked you? Is

my 401(k) OK, or am I going to run the risk of having it tank the

way Enron did?

Mr. LEVITT. I would not give them a blanket reassurance that

their 401(k) is necessarily OK. I think one of the greatest needs we

53

have in America, and it is a mission the SEC has undertaken in

recent years, is to educate investors. The problem with the 401(k),

and I know this will be the subject of extended discussion in the

future, is that very often participants really do not understand

what is going on in that 401(k) and companies do not have the ability to legally explain to them what is going on.

The 401(k) is kind of a stepchild of ERISA and I think there

should be some thought of giving some kind of legislative certainty

to the 401(k). I personally believe that there should be a prohibition on the amount of a company’s stock that an employee can invest in. Not the employer, because that is all voluntary and I would

not want to discourage that.

But I think employees get caught up in the hype of the company

and feel that if they are not putting the maximum in somehow or

another management will look at them as being less than loyal employees. And that is wrong. The attitude of skepticism that is so

important just does not exist there.

No, I would not want to panic people who have participated in

this very important program, but I would say that we cannot take

it for granted and there have to be changes and we are looking into

that and we are going to make changes and help investors become

wiser investors.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is exactly what I hope will result

from our deliberations and our investigations here. Senator Thompson.

Senator THOMPSON. Just a comment. I think what Mr. Levitt

said is very important, that it is not all a matter of skullduggery.

You cannot guarantee the safety of a 401(k), for example, if the

business involved is making bad business decisions. Sometimes

when everybody is obeying the law and doing the best they can, in

the stock market people lose money.

Mr. LEVITT. Yes, and always will.

Senator THOMPSON. And we will never be able to, and never

should try, to institute a system where people speculating in the

stock market, either directly or indirectly, are guaranteed that

there will not be any losses. I think it is important for the American public to understand that they have a responsibility to keep

up with what is going on with their own company and the stocks

that they invest in.

Mr. LEVITT. They need to trust the numbers.

Senator THOMPSON. That is assuming that everybody else is

doing their job. The gatekeepers are doing their job, and you can

take a look at that and make your decision. But there is an awful

lot of people who lose money in the stock market where people are

not violating the law. They lose money the old fashioned way.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I agree with what you have said, and, of

course, I know we also all agree that the disclosure and transparency is critically important here to make the market function.

Somebody said long ago that market capitalism is by far the best

means ever devised by humans, not only to create economic growth,

but to expand those who are enjoying the benefits of it.

But market capitalism has inherently no conscience. That is why

we set up gatekeepers and watchdogs. The gatekeepers were not

54

1The prepared statement of Mr. Henning with attachments appears in the Appendix on page

84.

keeping the gate here, the watchdogs were not watching; and average people got unnaturally taken advantage of.

We can go on a long time. We will probably ask you back at the

end of these deliberations as we shape the recommendations we

want to make. In the meantime, I thank you both very much for

your previous public service and frankly, for the public service you

are doing today, even though you are out of public service. Have

a good day.

I will call the second panel now. Bruce Henning, Director of Regulatory and Market Analysis for Energy and Environmental Analysis, Incorporated. John Langbein, a Sterling Professor of Law at

Yale Law School. And Frank Partnoy, Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law.

I thank you all for being here and for your patience. We look forward to your testimony now.

This panel will give us a kind of focus briefing on some of the

specific areas of concern that the Enron episodes raise in your

minds. Just as the previous panel, hopefully they will help us understand what we know now, but also to guide us as we go forward

in our investigation.

Mr. Henning, thanks for being here.

TESTIMONY OF BRUCE B. HENNING,1 DIRECTOR, REGULATORY AND MARKET ANALYSIS, ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS, INC.

Mr. HENNING. Thank you, Senator. My name is Bruce Henning

and I am Director of Regulatory and Market Analysis at Energy

and Environmental Analysis.

For the past 24 years, I have been an analyst in natural gas,

electricity, and energy markets, and I am here today to discuss the

behavior of natural gas and electricity markets in the wake of the

Enron bankruptcy.

Enron has been an important player in energy markets. Enron

was the largest marketer of natural gas and electricity in the

United States, operating in both the wholesale and retail energy

markets. Enron owns and operates interstate gas pipeline systems

and has interests in electric generation in more than a dozen

States.

The Enron failure caused some disruptions in natural gas and

electricity markets but these were relatively minor. Given the scope

of Enron’s activities, the absence of significant disruption in energy

markets is a credit to the markets and to its people. Throughout

the collapse of Enron supplies of gas and electricity have continued

to be delivered to the consumers. The reliability of the energy delivery system has not been compromised.

Moreover, gas and electricity prices that the retail customers

have seen have not been significantly affected. Enron’s retail gas

customers have been able to migrate to other suppliers at prices

that are substantially below what they were a year ago today.

Under the regulatory oversight of the Federal Energy Regulatory

Commission, natural gas has evolved into a highly competitive

55

commodity market. Competitive wholesale electricity markets are

less mature than their gas counterparts but significant progress

has been made. Examination of the wholesale prices since September indicates that gas and electricity markets have behaved

reasonably well during a period in which the largest market participant was in turmoil.

The Enron bankruptcy impacted market participants in a number of ways. When Enron Online, Enron’s electronic trading

platform, went dark the market lost an important source of price

information as well as a low cost transaction method of trading.

Fortunately, there were other sources of price information and

other, albeit much smaller, electronic trading platforms. Within

weeks most participants had largely adjusted to the loss of Enron

Online.

The financial exposure to companies involved in transactions

with Enron is a much more complicated issue. As a general matter,

energy companies work to limit the size of their exposure to any

individual company, even a company as large as Enron. As Enron

came under increasing pressure, many participants began to reduce

their exposure. Even so, these exposures remained large, but they

are manageable for most of the companies and should not interfere

with the physical delivery of energy to consumers.

Beyond that, Enron had entered into a number of longer term

contracts with buyers and sellers of gas and electricity. The status

of these contracts is unclear and will be determined through the

bankruptcy proceeding. It is possible that parties will find themselves back in the marketplace, even though they had thought that

they had hedged their stream of future production or their future

energy needs.

The loss of Enron has created an opportunity for other companies

to capture market share. However, the ability of these companies

to act aggressively in pursuit of market share has been tempered

with the need to ensure that these companies remain financially

strong.

The equity prices and bond ratings of a lot of energy companies

have come under pressure in recent weeks. As a result, these companies have begun to take actions to strengthen their balance

sheets and to restore lenders’ confidence. As part of these actions,

companies are reducing their capital budgets and cancelling or delaying power plant project constructions or delaying their commitments to new gas pipeline expansions.

However, the cancellation of power plant projects does not necessarily foretell an impending electricity shortage. In our opinion,

there was significantly more generation capacity proposed than

was going to be needed for the next 5 years. We felt like many of

these generation projects would be delayed or cancelled even without the Enron bankruptcy.

That being said, the decline in the bond ratings and equity prices

for many companies will increase the cost of capital for many of the

needed infrastructure projects. This increase will have an effect on

the energy markets for a number of years and if confidence is not

restored in the relatively near future, the fallout from the Enron

bankruptcy could be much more troublesome.

56

1The prepared statement of Mr. Langbein appears in the Appendix on page 93.

The events surrounding the Enron bankruptcy have been tragic

for thousands of Enron employees and investors and raise a number of serious questions regarding the corporate accounting and

disclosure of corporate information. All of us who work in energy

have seen individuals who have been hurt and I know the pain involved for those people. But from the relatively narrow perspective

of energy markets, the events show an ability to respond to a major

disruption without the interruption of delivery to energy consumers

and without significant energy price increases.

The electricity markets forged by Federal and State regulators,

and in accordance with Federal and State laws, performed well in

the face of an event that had never been seriously contemplated.

I would like to thank the Committee and the Chairman for the

opportunity to express my views, and I would be happy to answer

any questions I can.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Mr. Henning. That was very interesting. I have some questions that I will ask when we get to

that point.

Professor Langbein, thanks for being here.

TESTIMONY OF JOHN H. LANGBEIN,1 STERLING PROFESSOR

OF LAW AND LEGAL HISTORY, YALE LAW SCHOOL

Mr. LANGBEIN. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, I have been asked to talk with you about the pension consequences of the Enron bankruptcy.

The bad news is that there are millions of other American workers at risk of suffering similar losses in their 401(k) pension plans

and in other types of defined contribution pension plans. Worse

still, it does not take Enron-style corporate wrongdoing to cause

such losses. Businesses fail all the time, for many reasons. Competition produces failures as well as successes. The bankruptcy of

Kmart, currently in the news this week, illustrates that point. If

Kmart had had pension arrangements which were of the character

of Enron’s, full of employer stock, the Kmart employees would have

been as devastated as were the Enron employees.

In other words, if Enron had been a bunch of angels, the problem

would be the same. It is the bankruptcy that causes the loss. The

cause of the bankruptcy, which is very important for some of your

other purposes, is not what we are focusing on when we talk about

the pension problem.

The good news is that we know exactly what the problem is and

how to fix it. Indeed, the particularly good news is that Congress

already fixed it almost 30 years in the original enacting process

that produced ERISA. Congress fixed it by imposing a diversification requirement on pension plan investments for defined benefit

plans.

Unfortunately, in 1974 when ERISA was enacted, in the early

1970’s when ERISA was working its way through Congress, defined

contribution plans of the 401(k) sort and others, defined contribution plans were not important. They were regarded basically as

supplementary plans, extra savings for fat cats. They were not important parts of the pension process.

57

For very complicated, fascinating reasons, some of them troublesome, we have had across the last 20 years or so a major revolution

in the way in which the private pension system is structured. The

defined benefit system has matured. It is not growing. Almost all

the growth in the pension system today, in the private pension system, is in the form of defined contribution plans, and they have

many advantages.

In my prepared testimony I have mentioned a couple of the most

obvious: The tremendous transparency that people understand

what is in an account when it is an individual account; it is mine;

I get the numbers. That encourages more pension saving. There are

other major advantages to defined contribution plans. It is not all

a one-way story of danger.

But the big danger, the big difference associated with a defined

contribution pension plan is that instead of the employer bearing

the investment risk, it is the employee. It is just in these plans,

where the employer has now shifted the risk to the employee, that

we now have practices that the employers do not follow and would

not be allowed to follow by ERISA; namely, concentrating everything in employer stock. That is exactly what we do not allow in

the defined benefit plans where the employers bear the risk. But

in the defined contribution plan where the employee bears the risk,

we let the employer stuff employer stock into these plans.

There is just universal consensus in financial circles that concentrating all of your assets in the stock of any company, no matter

what it is, is stupid. It is dangerous. We have a technical term for

it in the financial literature. It is called uncompensated risk, bearing uncompensated risk. I do not want to go into the details of that.

Delighted to take questions on it. But the key point is, nobody who

knows anything about how to run a pension plan would ever do

this.

Yet we allow it to be done over in these 401(k) plans, and even

worse in something called ESOP’s, employee stock ownership

plans. That is where the big congressional failure has occurred. It

is the failure to bring over into this new world of employee-operated investment decisions the same basic norms that we are used

to over in the world of defined benefit plans.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I do not want to show preference to a

Yale law professor, but if you are in the middle of making another

argument, do not be deterred by the red light for a few moments.

Mr. LANGBEIN. Thanks so much. I think I probably ought to

stand down, but let me just conclude this by saying, I have more

detail in my prepared remarks. I have, in particular, the further

suggestion that if Congress is not able to make the big fix which

is needed, which is to get proper diversification standards over

from the defined benefit world where you solved—remember, nobody is in here telling you about their losses. You solved it. You

did a wonderful job.

If you cannot fix it over in the defined contribution world in the

way that I think you should, which is to go ahead and impose diversification, there is another alternative which I call the Surgeon

General cigarette pack solution, which is to require the summary

plan descriptions in defined contribution plans to warn employees

about the dangers of employer stock so that they value it properly,

58

1The prepared statement of Mr. Partnoy appears in the Appendix on page 103.

and also exercise their own option to move away from it in the part

of those plans that they control.

Let me just conclude, Senator, by saying that I can predict to

you, with absolute certainty, that you will see many more pension

catastrophes just like Enron, a similar sort of magnitude. We have

already had them in the past: Color Tile, many others—until the

basic rules get changed to stop allowing employers to stuff all this

employer stock in these pension plans. And to move us toward a

system in which the same diversification rules that are followed

elsewhere in the financial community get imposed on defined contribution plans.

Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Professor. That was very helpful

and in its way riveting, because of the warning at the end. I will

come back to you with some questions.

Professor Partnoy.

TESTIMONY OF FRANK PARTNOY,1 PROFESSOR OF LAW,

UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO SCHOOL OF LAW

Mr. PARTNOY. I want to thank Senators Lieberman and Thompson and the Committee for inviting me to testify. We have heard

a great deal today and in previous months about various aspects

of Enron’s problems. I am here today to talk to you about what I

regard as an even bigger problem: That is Enron’s involvement in

the unregulated derivatives market.

Please let me make three brief points. First, Enron was primarily

a derivatives trading firm, not an energy firm.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Take a minute to explain what that

means.

Mr. PARTNOY. Enron was involved in various aspects of derivatives markets, including what we call the over-the-counter derivatives markets which are, at $95 trillion, 90 percent of the derivatives markets. So derivatives are basically financial instruments

whose value is linked to some other instrument or index. Enron

was involved not in the exchange traded derivatives, which constitute about 10 percent of the markets and are regulated already.

Those are not at issue here. Enron was involved in the over-thecounter markets, which are the bulk of derivatives trading right

now.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Are not regulated?

Mr. PARTNOY. Which are not regulated. It may surprise investors

to learn that Enron was in fact a speculative trading house chock

full of these derivative instruments. The best way to see that is

just to look at this building, look at Enron’s building. Executive offices overlook the crown jewel of Enron’s empire which is essentially a cavernous derivatives trading pit.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Like a trading exchange?

Mr. PARTNOY. Just like a trading exchange, except that it is not

regulated.

In fact Enron has been compared today and previously to LongTerm Capital Management. Long-Term Capital Management, as

you know, is a hedge fund that collapsed, lost billions of dollars,

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and was rescued in a private bailout engineered by the New York

Federal Reserve. There are some similarities, but what I am here

to tell you today is that Enron makes Long-Term Capital Management look like a lemonade stand.

Enron made more money from derivatives in 2000 than LongTerm Capital made in its entire life. Enron lost 20 times more capital than Long-Term. Enron had 100 times more employees. It had

public investors, and no one bailed out Enron.

I have told you a little bit about what these derivatives are.

Enron’s derivatives ranged from natural gas prices and interest

rates, to dot-com stocks, and rights to fiber-optic bandwidth. As I

have mentioned, let me repeat, these markets are largely unregulated markets. That is point No. 1.

Point No. 1, Enron shows we cannot trust derivatives disclosure

more generally. Derivatives were the key to Enron’s abuse of these

special purpose entities we have talked about today. Enron’s list of

these entities, just the list is 60 single-spaced pages long. Many

companies have similar lists, and their disclosure is now suspect.

If we cannot trust Enron, can we trust General Electric, or IBM,

or Coca-Cola.

Special purpose entities are very common and can be used for

good or for ill. Unfortunately, Enron used them for ill. It hid spectacular losses on technology stocks, it hid billions in debts, it inflated the value of speculative assets. Many of these trades did not

involve energy at all.

Just let me give you one example. Enron bought a technology

stock called Rhythms Net Communications that skyrocketed during

1999. Enron sold that stock to one of these entities and recognized

a gain of several hundred million dollars. Then Enron used a sham

transaction with the entity, including—and this is the key—a $1

billion derivatives trade to avoid recognizing losses as the stock

plummeted the next year. This was true even though Enron retained the economic risk of its investment in that stock.

The important point here is that Enron, like many companies,

manipulated its numbers to meet analysts quarterly estimates.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. What is the source of your information on

the story you have just told us?

Mr. PARTNOY. The troubling part about this is that much of the

source of this information is from Enron’s financial statements. If

you look at Enron’s financial statements you get a sense of how

broad its involvement in derivatives is. The specific information

about this company and some of the others that I allude to in my

written testimony come from the more recent 10Q. If you just look

at the difference in size—I will show you—just in thickness. This

is the most recent 10Q Enron filed. This is where some of the information comes from.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. With the SEC.

Mr. PARTNOY. With the SEC. This is after information had already come out. But much of the information, and one of the troubling things about this, is alluded to in the documents and the

gatekeepers failed to uncover some of that information.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That was the point of my question. They

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ther understand it or did not bother to report it to the investing

public.

Mr. PARTNOY. That is exactly right. That, Senator, leads to my

third point, which is that the gatekeepers failed to tell investors

that Enron was so risky. Enron’s officers and directors, of course,

are to blame. But we should look carefully at the gatekeepers as

well. Too much focus on Enron’s officers misses the mark.

If I could just finish this thought.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Go right ahead.

Mr. PARTNOY. Enron’s officers clearly knew that there was some

derivatives use going on within the firm. Enron even distributed a

derivatives training manual to new employees. But gatekeepers

also had information. Gatekeepers include accounting firms, law

firms, securities firms, and very importantly, credit rating agencies. They are supposed to monitor even conflicted managers. Gatekeepers, of course, should and will be held liable when appropriate.

In Enron’s case the accountants, as we know, already are at risk

and others may or may not be.

My point here is that credit rating agencies in particular have

great market power. They have been given market power by the

law, and they are largely undisciplined by the threat of liability,

and that should change.

In closing, ultimately Congress must decide whether after 10

years of steady deregulation the post-Enron over-the-counter unregulated derivatives markets should remain in this regulatory

black hole, exempt from the rule that covers most investment contracts. The basic message I would like to leave with you is that I

believe it is time to shine some much-needed light on these unregulated derivatives markets.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much. Again, the three of

you have been very helpful and I thank you, Professor Partnoy, and

others, for what looks to me to be the fresh work that you have

done in the testimony that you have presented to us, particularly

in analyzing the Enron situation.

Professor Langbein, I was thinking as you were talking, I once

said to somebody about 10 years out of law school that I was ready

to go to law school then because I thought I would understand better my professors. I think you helped teach me a lot today.

Mr. LANGBEIN. We have an LLM program if you would like to

come back.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. It is beginning to look pretty good actually. [Laughter.]

The question I wanted to ask you is about your main point which

is that through ERISA Congress regulated so-called defined benefit, normal pension plans, but as the 401(k)’s defined contribution

programs came along and expanded, millions of people now having

their dreams of future security resting on them, we did not have

similar protections.

The one you have talked about is diversification. If you had your

druthers, if you were King, what is the rule that you would promulgate with regard to defined contribution 401(k)’s?

Mr. LANGBEIN. It would take some technical drafting but I would

basically insist that the same diversification standards apply to

401(k)’s as apply to ordinary pension plans.

61

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Just for the record, tell us—and I understand you cannot cover every nuance, but in basic terms what are

they? In other words, some of the proposals that colleagues here

have made is that there should not be more than 20 percent, for

instance, of a company’s stock in a 401(k) of its employee. Is that

an appropriate number?

Mr. LANGBEIN. That is roughly 20 percent more than I believe we

ought to have. In other words, in a defined benefit plan today we

have only trivial amounts of employer stock. That is the right answer. The single most important thing for workers to understand

is that employer stock is the single worst investment you can possibly have.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Why?

Mr. LANGBEIN. The reason is that the worker is already horribly

underdiversified vis-a-vis the risks of that firm because he is what

we call human capital. His employment relationship has him already deeply exposed to the risks of that firm. What ordinary finance theory tells you is, the last thing in the world you should do

is to take the little sliver of diversifiable capital, your finance capital, namely your pension savings, take the one bit that you have

that you can invest elsewhere and tie it back up with the employer.

That is the fundamental fallacy of employer stock plans. They are

a fundamentally bad idea.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So if you had your druthers you would

pretty much prohibit employers from putting its own stock in a

401(k)?

Mr. LANGBEIN. I would not say it just that way. There are circumstances in which trace amounts show up. For example, you do

not want General Motors in its pension plan not to be able to buy

the S&P 500 type funds which have some General Motors stock in

it. We get the result that we are talking about, basically no employer stock, without saying so, under existing ERISA rules for defined benefit plans by imposing a prudence requirement and then

allowing that to sort itself out. No investor can prudently invest

heavily in employer stock.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Let me go on to another subject.

Mr. LANGBEIN. Senator, may I just say one other thing? Your

question was about the 20 percent proposal in the Boxer-Corzine

bill.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. LANGBEIN. Look, it is a lot better than nothing. If you have

got to compromise, compromise. There are a lot of political pressures out there, there are a lot of reasons why employers and their

pals want to stuff employer stock down pension plans.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. You do not have to compromise so I appreciate hearing exactly what——

Mr. LANGBEIN. That is exactly right. I am just a schoolteacher.

I can go home and leave you to have to cut the compromises. And

if you have got to compromise, that is an awful lot better than we

have got now.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Incidentally, I do want to note for the

record, as you know—and I have been reading this in the media—

some of the great companies in America have 401(k)’s in which

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they have got 60, 70 percent of their stock. That alarms me as I

hear your testimony.

Mr. LANGBEIN. Senator, as of 2 years ago Enron was one of the

great companies in America.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. There you go; exactly.

Mr. LANGBEIN. That should tell you what the danger is.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good point. Anything else besides the diversification requirement that you would say we might do by law

to protect people’s investments in their 401(k)’s? If you want to

think about it and submit later testimony, that is OK.

Mr. LANGBEIN. I think the main—99 percent of what has gone

wrong here is having large quantities of any stock, especially employer stock, in these plans. If there is one piece of advice I could

give your constituents it is, to the extent that you have discretion

over your own employee contributions in these plans, resist the

pressure to show your loyalty to the firm by investing back in the

stock of your employer. Your loyalty should be shown by what a

good employee you are, but not by concentrating investment risk

back in employer stock.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Let me ask one other question related to

this. One of the parts of the Enron story that infuriates all of us

is the question of the period of time during which the Enron employees were locked into their 401(k)’s. The stock price is falling.

We now know from public records that the executives are selling

their stock, cutting their losses, making a lot of money, and the employees cannot get out. They say this was because of a transition

in plan administrators.

I want to ask you whether as a matter of law, technology being

what it is now, in terms of transition of plan administrators we

should prohibit lockdowns of that kind to make sure that employees always have mobility as the market moves, and their company

moves or other companies move, to sell their stock?

Mr. LANGBEIN. Senator, I think the answer is that the law is in

place to deal with this. The basic way in which we handle these

details of plan administration is to impose a requirement, which

you have done, and done on defined contributions as well as defined benefit plans, that they be administered by people who are

fiduciaries. Then we impose fiduciary duties in Section 404 of

ERISA, including one of prudent administration.

The question of whether or not Enron should have been changing

plan administrators in a period in which its stock price was under

great pressure is, in my view, a very serious one and one which I

think is likely to raise fiduciary liability on them for having done

so.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. You think they may be subject to lawsuits

by their employees——

Mr. LANGBEIN. Those lawsuits are pending right now.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Do those suits include this element?

Mr. LANGBEIN. Yes, the lockdown period is the subject of plaintiff’s litigation ongoing right now.

The precise question you have asked is, how long the period

ought to be. In the case of the Enron plan there was, I think 11

trading days involved, some such thing. I do not think Congress

should attempt to micromanage this. I think the proper standard

63

is the one which we have under fiduciary law, which is that which

is reasonable in the light of all the circumstances, bearing in mind

the fiduciary duty to maximize the best interest of the employees

under Section 404(a)(1)(A) of ERISA. You have got this right already in the law.

That is not where your efforts ought to go. Your efforts ought to

go on the diversification problem.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks. My time is up. Senator Thompson.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Partnoy, educate me a little bit further with regard to the

use of derivatives. I take it derivatives are neither inherently good

or evil, that they can be used for speculative purposes, they can be

used as insurance policies to hedge. It seems that, as you pointed

out, Enron used derivatives in deals with its own special purpose

entities that it set up, and by trading with what looks like pretty

much itself in many cases, it was able to hide debts and losses and

to make sales to these special purpose entities at inflated prices

and book the profits. So apparently that is the way they were using

them for their purposes.

Then you look at the regulatory structure, and as you pointed

out, some derivatives are regulated and some are not. Apparently

this has been the subject of a good deal of debate over the years

and we have come up with a situation where energy derivatives,

for example, are exempted, financial derivatives are exempted from

regulation under the CFTC.

The working group on financial markets under the previous administration recommended in 1997 that these exempt derivatives

be exempt, as I understand it, for reasons that they were deep

markets. Unlike the agriculture field, for example, there was likely

price manipulation, and there were big, deep markets in these

areas and so forth. So a lot of good people apparently thought that

a lot of these things should be unregulated.

So tell me what—and I am not trying to make a point here. I

am really curious as to, when we talk about regulation what is it

exactly that would be regulated with regard to the derivative markets, if they were regulated? I mean, they would have to go

through an exchange and file certain reports, I guess. But what

does it actually mean?

More importantly, what would it mean to the Enron case? What

part of what they did, which in large part seems to me to be a failure to properly disclose more than the inherent activity itself perhaps, which may have been legal and proper. What part of what

they did that gave us bad results could have been avoided, in your

opinion, had there been regulation of these derivatives?

Mr. PARTNOY. Senator, I think you have the story absolutely

right; derivatives can be used for ill or for good, and there are perfectly valid reasons to say we should have some derivatives traded

on an exchange, and some derivatives traded in some other venue.

But I think you have isolated the key point, and that is disclosure.

Whatever these investments and instruments were—and it turns

out that what they were is quite troubling—they should have been

disclosed. We easily could require that they be disclosed. There

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should not be an argument that just because these are something

different that they can be left off the financial statements.

Senator THOMPSON. Would regulation as such, in and of itself,

bring about that disclosure? Or is it a disclosure issue and not necessarily a regulation issue?

Mr. PARTNOY. There is a separate matter which is, why is it that

we are treating these sorts of financial contracts differently than

other investments? What is the rationale for that? In some derivatives there is a very good rationale. Interest rate swaps, for example. There is a very deep market, trillions and trillions of dollars

with sophisticated actors. There are not problems of somebody ripping off somebody else. There are not problems of public investors

losing money. That actually is the vast majority of the over-thecounter derivatives market.

But there is a decent chunk of the over-the-counter derivatives

market that has problems. I think a lot of those problems could be

corrected by recognizing the fact that these are investment contracts just like anything else, and recognizing that they should be

disclosed.

Senator THOMPSON. But I still do not understand what

unpleasantries we could have avoided in this case had these derivative markets been regulated.

Mr. PARTNOY. I would draw your attention to footnote 16 of

Enron’s 2000 annual report.

Senator THOMPSON. I am very familiar with it.

Mr. PARTNOY. If you can tell me what is going on—— Senator THOMPSON. Just kidding.

Mr. PARTNOY. You should take a look at it. It is about a page

long and it would be very well worth your time. It is chock full of

derivatives transactions of all sorts. You literally cannot tell who

the derivative transactions are between, what they are. If we had

clear disclosure about those transactions then the Enron situation

might not have happened.

Senator THOMPSON. Couldn’t we have disclosure without regulation?

Mr. PARTNOY. If somehow magically companies were to say, and

some hopefully will, we will tell you all of our derivatives contracts—this relates to accounting actually. This relates to the accounting issue. Because if we had strong accounting standards and

strong auditors they would say, hey, just because these are derivatives contracts does not mean you can push them off over into this

off-balance sheet transaction and not list them.

So I think that it is possible you could accomplish what you want

through more rigorous disclosure requirements that apply to derivatives.

Senator THOMPSON. Mr. Henning, do you have an opinion on

this?

Mr. HENNING. Yes, I do, Senator. Appreciate it.

One of the things to recognize is that derivatives, and basically

the financial contracts, are very important in energy markets, in

addition to the fact that the energy markets are quite liquid, and

the data shows that we did not see great deviations in the prices

as a result of that. It is very important to be able to trade in a

whole variety of locations.

65

Natural gas is exchange traded at the Henry Hub in Louisiana.

But in order to move natural gas around the pipeline system and

in order to be useful to hedge on the behalf of consumers you have

to be able to deal with trades that are happening at lots of other

places around the pipeline system. This happens in the over-thecounter market.

Over this last summer there has been a big emphasis within the

State regulatory commissions to look at ways to use hedging strategies in order to try to insulate customers from those kind of movements.

Senator THOMPSON. So what? Are you making the case for these

derivatives not to be regulated?

Mr. HENNING. I am making the case that they are very important. I am making the case that the regulated entity in terms of

their involvement should not be forced into any additional disclosure that an unregulated entity is involved in, and that fundamental issue in my opinion is a broad accounting issue in terms of

the disclosure of information and the way we get that disclosure

out into the marketplace.

Senator THOMPSON. I am not sure I know any more than when

I started, Mr. Chairman, but we will revisit the issue.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I think maybe you and I both should go

back to that LLM program.

Senator THOMPSON. Thanks.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Thompson.

I have some good news to report that my staff just informed me

of. This is how terrible events sometimes produce in their wake

also good results and reaction, which is that—you will be happy to

hear this, Fred—that they have just obtained the 218th signature

in the House on the discharge petition for campaign finance reform.

Senator LEVIN. Bravo.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Bravo is right. So that bill will go to the

House floor, and hopefully it can match up with the campaign finance reform bill that passed the Senate last year and we can at

least close the loophole in the law through which the large unregulated, unlimited soft money contributions are made.

This goes back to something said before, I believe by Senator

Thompson, about this matter, which was, sometimes the most scandalous behavior is legal. There is some scandalous behavior I think

in Enron that is illegal. But in the campaign finance laws the most

scandalous behavior is the legal end run of soft money. So anyway,

good news.

Senator Levin.

Senator LEVIN. Thank you. That is good news indeed. I want to

go back to footnote 16. I have not read it either, but you say that

it does disclose something there, and that if certain people had

really been on the ball perhaps they would have forced a greater

disclosure. Auditors never should have agreed to it to begin with,

but if analysts had been on the ball perhaps they would have asked

questions about that disclosure because it was so obfuscating and

unclear. Is that right?

Mr. PARTNOY. That is exactly right. I would not have recommended that anybody buy this based on that footnote. It is really only a page. Just take a look at it. Would you have recomVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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mended Enron stock if you read that footnote? I do not think anyone would have.

Senator LEVIN. So what we are talking about here then is not

just disclosure, you are talking about disclosure which meets certain standards of clarity. Is that why you want this to be regulated,

because a regulator could force clearer disclosure standards? Is

that the purpose of the regulation that you are proposing?

Mr. PARTNOY. Sure. Clearly, uniformity is important. If we just

have people off making disclosures on their own we may not be

able to understand or compare. One of the points of disclosure is

to be able to compare companies, so that we can look at Company

A and Company B and say, OK, they have this many derivatives

and they have this many derivatives, so we should buy this one instead. We want it to be comparable.

Senator LEVIN. Other than disclosure, which is what regulation

could require in greater clarity, is there any specific action in the

creation of these entities, in all of the havens, the offshore entities

that were created as well as the special purpose entities, 800 or

900 entities that were created, are there any specific actions of

Enron that a regulatory body in your judgment would have prohibited, other than the disclosure issue?

Mr. PARTNOY. Some of these derivatives transactions with the

special purpose entities are very troubling and the question would

be, if they were put in the context of a securities regulation, a

standard investment contract, what would a securities regulator

say about that? What would the SEC say about that? I think they

would have problems with these transactions. They are very troubling.

Senator LEVIN. Who, in your judgment, should regulate this overthe-counter derivatives market? Is it the SEC or the CFTC? Who

would you recommend for that?

Mr. PARTNOY. That has been a very difficult question for 20

years. As you know, I am sure, there was a turf battle between the

SEC and the CFTC over some of these issues, and I do not have

a lot of good answers. I would be happy to think carefully about

it. I think the important point, and it sounds like the message has

gotten through, is that these are unregulated markets and maybe

that is not such a good idea.

Senator LEVIN. I think that message has probably come through,

but we have to take the next step. If they are going to be regulated,

who would do the regulation? I think we need the advice of folks

on that as well. Mr. Chairman, I would ask that perhaps this be

supplied for the record, if you would just allow that to happen.

That goes for any of our other witnesses, by the way.

On the question of the 401(k)’s, you made a reference, Professor,

to ESOP’s.

Mr. LANGBEIN. Yes.

Senator LEVIN. I am someone who has supported ESOP’s. I remember Russell Long here talking about the importance of employee ownership, and we wanted people to have a stake in the enterprise because they would really feel then a keen interest in the

quality of their work, and a number of other positive things. But

ESOP’s were viewed around here as something which would help

those who worked to become owners of the enterprise. So your comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00070 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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ment was somewhat disparaging, I think, about ESOP’s, if I heard

it right. But I would like to hear your—please testify about

ESOP’s.

Mr. LANGBEIN. You have just repeated the standard theology of

ESOP’s, which is that they are wonderful things that help workers

own their own firms, and therefore, cause them to identify with

capitalism.

Senator LEVIN. Could I just interrupt for one second? First of all,

these are employee stock ownership plans, for anyone out there

who does not know what an ESOP is. I should have said that. But,

second, would you distinguish in your answer between stock which

is owned now by an employee and stock that goes into a retirement

fund; is there any distinction in that regard?

Mr. LANGBEIN. Yes. Let me take that one first. The most troubling part of the 401(k) phenomenon, and to some extent the ESOP

phenomenon is that these concentrations of employer stock are

coming in the form of a displacement of conventional pension plans.

Russell Long and the other people who gave us ESOP’s did not

foresee or want that. It was always thought that ESOP’s—that is,

back in the days when they came into ERISA in 1974—would be

supplementary plans and that they would not have the effect that

they have had in all too many companies of becoming really the

substitute for a private pension plan.

A very simple solution—simple to enunciate, difficult to draft,

but it is doable—would be to insist that no firm run an ESOP without first having run an adequate private pension plan, a non-ESOP

type plan.

Now, with respect to the question, what is wrong with these

plans, with ESOP’s and with large concentration of employer stock,

it is the point I made earlier, which is that the employee already

has his future tied up with the firm. Remember that these ESOP’s

and 401(k)’s are, in an important way, public plans as well as private. They are privately created, but they would not exist in practical significance in their present extent, they would not exist but

for the tax subsidy that is inherent in them.

These are all what we call tax-qualified plans. There is a huge

tax deduction for this employer stock, and there is the advantage

of tax deferrals across the years which works out to be—I think it

is the second largest so-called tax expenditure item in the tax expenditure budget. These are hugely subsidized. They are there for

public purposes.

The idea that somebody should come along and be able to relabel

his own company’s effort to get the employees to identify with it,

whatever good that does for the company, to relabel that a pension

plan entitled to have this massive Federal tax subsidy is a very peculiar notion.

Senator LEVIN. My time is up. I think that I agree with what you

say for the most part, but I am not sure that I would label this

totally as employers stuffing stock into a plan, because I think

there is a real legitimate public policy purpose in having people

own a piece of the enterprise. I think that there is an added incentive there to make the enterprise successful that people might not

realize to the same extent through simply being an hourly paid

worker.

68

Mr. LANGBEIN. I agree with that completely, but I would say to

you—I used to be in Chicago and at one point there was a proposal

to build some power plant or something out in the lake, and the

opposition group put together some bumper strips. When I was in

Chicago all the guys had these bumper strips, and the bumper

strips said, ‘‘Don’t do it in the lake.’’ My suggestion for the bumper

strip here is, ‘‘Don’t do it in the pension plan.’’ If you want people to have employer stock and you want to make

it advantageous, we do that right now with discount stock purchase

plans and so on, but they are not tax-qualified pension plans. What

is wrong with the present structure is that we allow employers to

get tax deductions and tax subsidies of other sorts for putting massive quantities of employer stock in things that employees are relying on as pension plans.

Senator LEVIN. I think that is a very important distinction. So

that you are not talking about employee stock ownership that does

not have those tax benefits and are not part of pension plans, but

only the ones that are. I think that is a huge important distinction.

Mr. LANGBEIN. Yes, and I will go further. For high level executives, I think it is particularly important that they be exposed, they

be at risk with the company.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks. Very interesting. Senator Bennett.

Senator BENNETT. Thank you. I could engage in this conversation

some more, but within the limited time let me switch to the issue

of derivatives, because this has come up before. We were on the

Banking Committee when the Orange County failure occurred and

the headlines said, it was because they traded in derivatives. As we

dug into it we found that the failure occurred because they made

stupid decisions. As Alan Greenspan said to us, the use of derivatives simply made the effect of those decisions more efficient. If the

man had made intelligent decisions, the use of derivatives would

have been a wise thing because there would be greater efficiency

in getting this.

What it boiled down to is he was making the wrong bet on interest rates. When the interest rates moved against, because he had

always been right in the past, he doubled down on his bet, and he

used derivatives to do it. Then he destroyed the entire pension plan

of Orange County employees, and taxes had to go up in Orange

County for decades after.

In a sense, is that not what we have here, where the executives

of Enron, filled with the hubris of their success said, we are so

smart that everything we bet on is going to come up roses, so we

will go bet on bandwidth, we will go bet on dot-coms, we will go

invest. And we have figured out this nifty way to do it with somebody else’s money and all we have to do is guarantee it with our

own stock. And since our own stock is going to be going up perpetually forever, that is no risk. And it is too hard to explain to somebody so we will put it in a footnote that nobody can figure out. And

everything is going to be wonderful.

It turned out that they were as stupid as the controller of the

Orange County pension plan and it all collapsed on them, and then

they started shredding documents. But is that a correct description

of what happened? If it is, then let’s talk about the sunshine that

69

we put on, or the spotlight that we shine on the derivatives trading. Instead of starting with the spotlight, let’s go down to a base

understanding of what happened. Am I correct in my description

of what happened?

Mr. PARTNOY. Yes. Let’s start with the facts. You are largely correct. The paradox of Enron is that the company actually made huge

amounts of money from its derivative trading, even in the last

year. Where it lost its money is on all of these other bets, many

of which you have mentioned: Fiber optics—they have been covered

in the media extensively. But at its core it actually made a lot of

money trading derivatives.

One of the problems that I have been trying to think about is

what should be disclosed about that trading operation? Maybe

Enron actually could have been a viable entity as a derivatives

trading shop. But the problem is, investors did not know that.

When you looked at Enron’s financial statements it did not say,

hey, we are a derivatives trading firm. It said, hey, we have all

these other businesses going on, and by the way, it looks like we

are making a lot of money over time.

The reality is, the only thing Enron was making money on was

trading its derivatives, and trading derivatives was making up for

all the losses in all of these other bad bets that you just described.

Senator BENNETT. Losses in what was perceived by the investment community as being its core business?

Mr. PARTNOY. That is correct.

Senator BENNETT. So we come back to the old adage, where is

the best place to hide a leaf? The answer is, in plain sight on the

floor of the forest surrounded by all of the other leaves. I have had

to produce 10Ks and 10Qs in my life and I know how impenetrable

they are.

Maybe the issue we should be focusing on with the accounting

firm is how to write plain English sentences. Maybe the summary

of the 10K or the 10Q should be: This is what is happening in the

core business. This is what is happening in the areas we are experimenting with. This is where we are taking a risk, in bold print

right up front rather than the arcane language of an accountant

that drives you—and then the lawyers. By the time those two

groups get through with the English language it becomes almost

impossible for somebody who is not trained in both to understand

what they are saying.

Maybe the focus should be—General Grant. There is an anecdote. General Grant had as one of his closest staff a fellow who was

not very bright. People would say to him, why do you have that

dummy on your staff. He said, because I read my general orders

to him first, and if he can understand them, then I know the commanders in the field will not misunderstand them. Maybe we ought

to have a house dummy somewhere at these accounting firms that

has to sift through this language and say, yes, it is now clear.

Obviously, we cannot pass legislation to that——

[Laughter.]

Mr. PARTNOY. There is a plain English requirement and financial

statements have gotten a lot clearer. But I went through Enron’s

financial statements, and my written testimony is 32 pages, and it

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is as clear as I could make it. And if you gave it to an average investor it would be quite daunting, I think.

Part of the problem is that these things really are very complicated and we have problems with the rules. So the rules, even

if this was clearly described, an investor would say, this is crazy,

do you mean to tell me the accounting does not match up at all

with economic reality? But that is what the rules say, all of these

complicated rules basically allow managers to have accounting

statements that do not match up with economic reality.

Even if that had been clear to investors I still think you would

have this problem because within the clarity there still are things

that can be moved off the balance sheet. In other words, say nothing; it is not on the balance sheet. And say nothing cannot be made

any clearer, right? So improving clarity, I think, is a very important goal but will not solve the entire problem because many of

these, the problematic transactions, are because of these rules.

As Senator Thompson mentioned before, one of the problems is

a lot of these accounting issues are arguably quite legal. If they

are, even if they are clearly described they still would lead to these

problems.

Senator BENNETT. My own problem with this process, a word

that I never learned until I got to the stage in my career where

I was dealing with 10Ks and 10Qs, was materiality. What is material? We would have towering arguments as to what was material.

Basically what that comes down to is, we do not think this is important to disclose.

We have just found out that you have done something really horrible, but we have put a dollar figure on it and the dollar figure

compared to the total value of the enterprise says that it falls

below the statistical level of materiality. So we say, the fact that

you have just raped your secretary and stolen goods off of the company, etc., when we add up all of the dollars connected with that

activity we say that is not material, so we are not going to disclose

that. Whereas, somebody that was looking at you as a responsible

executive would say, that is a very material fact.

So I guess what I am saying here is that we ought to examine

what we think people really need to know rather than the legal

structure that is currently there that says, if you comply with this

and this and this you are within the law, even though you are ignoring all of the rest of this, that we just say, it is not material.

Mr. PARTNOY. Senator, I think you are right. The problem, of

course, is that what is really material, if it is bad, the managers

do not want to tell shareholders because that will cause the stock

price to go down. So the question for regulation has to be, how do

we create incentives that will either force managers to give up that

information, or to have gatekeepers who will effectively look at the

managers and force the managers to give up that information?

But I think you are absolutely right, there are all sorts of information that investors would think would be very important that is

not reflected in that information. That is why, quite frankly, we

have seen stocks going down in price recently, because investors

are worried that there could be other disclosures that accountants

said, this was not material, but it is still there and it is not reflected in the financial statements.

71

Senator BENNETT. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Very interesting. I could not agree with

you more about the clarity of the reporting. Because part of what

happened, because these are inherently complicated, is that the

people we rely on to translate the complicated verbiage, the analysts, etc., failed as well.

Incidentally, Senator Levin wanted me to clarify that when you

used the term house dummy you were not referring to his brother.

[Laughter.]

Senator LEVIN. That was just a private joke. You just ruined a

66-year-old relationship.

Senator BENNETT. I have no comment, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. A quick question and then Senator

Thompson has a final question. This panel is too interesting.

Professor Partnoy, do you have any idea of what the dollar value

annually is of the over-the-counter unregulated trading in derivatives?

Mr. PARTNOY. It is estimated at $95.2 trillion. That is trillion

with a ‘‘T.’’ The estimate is almost certainly an understatement.

The over-the-counter derivative transactions that Enron privately

would enter into, for example, with some of these special purpose

entities, would not be included in that statistic. So we are talking

about a number that is seven times the regulated exchanges. We

are talking about a number that is significantly larger than the

U.S. stock market, for example.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is what I was going to ask you.

When you said regulated exchanges, regulated sales, you are talking about derivative sales it is seven times greater than?

Mr. PARTNOY. Exactly, the regulated U.S. options——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Can you compare it to—what is the annual volume of sales on the New York Stock Exchange?

Mr. PARTNOY. The total market capitalization fluctuates a lot but

we are talking $15 trillion, $20 trillion, in that ballpark.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So unregulated derivatives trading is that

much larger every year?

Mr. PARTNOY. Yes, this is in notional terms. The amount at risk

we are talking about in those contracts—even the people from the

financial services firms, the lobbyists will come and say, no, that

figure is wrong. It is the amount that is at risk. But we are still

talking about trillions and trillions of dollars that are at risk.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is astounding.

Mr. PARTNOY. And in the U.S. stock market it is basically the

same story.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. We will come back in a separate hearing

to the question of whether that should be regulated or not. On that

question, my final question, I will begin with you, Mr. Henning—

Professor Partnoy, if you want to add anything, I welcome it—

which is the whole question of deregulation of energy markets; not

derivatives trading.

Last summer we had these rolling power blackouts in California

and price spikes all around the country. Now we have got Enron,

the largest energy trader, which that trading was obviously growing in part, some of it, all because of the deregulation of energy,

electricity, for instance, markets. So obviously some critics of deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:20 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 78614.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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regulation point to these events as evidence that deregulation

should be reversed. I wanted to ask you what you think the lessons

are for the way in which—from Enron, and perhaps the California

experience—for the way in which energy markets should be regulated?

Mr. HENNING. Senator, I think the movement towards competitive commodity markets for energy have benefited consumers. I

think that if you look back at the history of natural gas and you

look at the—even with last year’s high natural gases, in real terms

natural gas prices were lower than they were back in 1983. So it

has moved to the benefit of consumers. It, in fact, prevented the

need for the same kinds of situations that you had back in 1976

and 1977 where you literally had to close schools in the State of

Ohio because there was not any natural gas to heat them that winter.

So the lesson learned from deregulation was that you have to set

up, and you have to set it up in a strong market. The FERC has

been involved in doing that, and the one thing that, I guess, I believe is somewhat of a misnomer is energy is still highly regulated.

The structures of the markets are being determined for electricity

in regional transmission organizations. That is work in progress,

but the FERC is doing a good job with that.

The market monitoring that the FERC is doing is going forward.

So from that perspective, yes, you had events, driven largely by inadequate infrastructure and a confluence of weather events and so

forth that affected the California market, as well as perhaps a poor

original market design in the State of California. But by in large,

the marketplace has wound up working.

The regulation has continued, and I guess I would just finish in

saying that the FERC is doing its job in oversight for these energy

markets. The question was asked earlier about where derivatives

should be looked at, should it be CFTC or the SEC? I am not qualified to say, but the one thing I would say is, have the FERC continue to do what it is doing in energy markets and not have them

impose additional things exclusively on the regulated entities

there.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I appreciate the answer. It is helpful. This

Committee got into the crisis in California last year. I must say,

there we felt that FERC was not doing its job. Ultimately, it did

come in and create some regulation on the prices that were being

charged by producers and wholesalers to people in California.

Dr. Partnoy, do you want to add anything?

Mr. PARTNOY. Could I just add one brief point to this because I

think you have hit on something very important.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. The basic question is, should we go back

and urge the other State legislators around the country to go back

and take a second look at deregulation—deregulating the energy

markets?

Mr. PARTNOY. I think you have hit on a very important point and

it is part of what Senator Bennett and I were talking about, which

is how did Enron’s derivatives operation make all this money? In

your dealing with, when you are trading with people who are less

sophisticated than you are it is a better business. You are going to

make more money in those kinds of markets.

73

That is one of the reasons—and Senator Thompson raised—why

should we have regulation here? One reason might be, when you

have parties who are dealing with substantially less sophisticated

entities—and the securities markets generally they have claims,

and rightfully so, to make the markets more efficient. In the derivatives markets those claims are much more difficult to make.

How is it that Enron was making billions of dollars a year trading?

It had an advantage in trading those markets.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK, very helpful. Senator Thompson.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It seems to me

that Mr. Henning’s earlier point is the valid one here, and that is

that it is real proof that free markets do work and have worked.

There has been no price spike and no lack of product or anything

like that, at least not for these reasons.

But Mr. Partnoy, you mentioned another entity here kind of in

passing that I think is very important. The credit rating companies, bond rating companies which presumably have access to detailed company financial data, as recently as October both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s gave solid ratings for Enron’s debt. I do

not see the conflict of interest with them that we have been talking

about with these other gatekeepers and so forth. How do you, any

of you, how do you account for that?

Mr. PARTNOY. They are paid directly by the issuers, first of all,

and we do not know exactly how much they are paid.

Senator THOMPSON. So there is a conflict issue there?

Mr. PARTNOY. There is an issue. The principal problem with

credit rating agencies—and thank you so much for bringing up this

question because I think it is critical to this story—is that credit

rating agencies essentially have a legislative monopoly. Congress

and the SEC and many regulators have given credit rating agencies a monopoly lock on their business. There is no one else who

can enter and there are hundreds of legal rules that depend substantively on what rating you get. That is why they have so much

power, from these legal rules.

If we got rid of those legal rules and made credit ratings a competitive business, we would not have these issues where it is dramatic if you get downgraded below BBB. Why is that? Why does

it matter if Standard & Poor’s, this private agency, downgrades you

below BBB? Because you are toast in financial markets if you are

below BBB. It is much more expensive to borrow. It is more expensive for people to hold your debt.

So that is where—there are two pieces to this. One is credit rating agencies make money. Moody’s has a market capitalization of

about $5 billion. It is a huge and very valuable franchise.

The second point is, the reason they have that franchise is that

we, I think quite lazily, adopted legal rules that defer judgments

about investments to these credit rating agencies.

Senator THOMPSON. Are these legislative enactments that we

have passed or are they regulations coming out of the SEC or

other——

Mr. PARTNOY. They are regulations pursuant to various statutes

that Congress has passed. It has been going on for almost 30 years.

I would be happy to give you hundreds and hundreds of pages on

this. I have been writing about this problem with credit rating

74

agencies for many years and I think it is central to why Enron collapsed, especially at the end.

Senator THOMPSON. We will follow up on that. Thank you very

much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you. Senator Levin tells me that I

asked the question he had in mind; not about his brother, but

about the value of the over-the-counter unregulated derivatives

markets.

The three of you have been a superb panel. I appreciate very

much the time you took in preparing your testimony and in being

with us. Thank everybody who participated today. I think we are

off to a good substantive start with a lot of work yet to do.

The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:05 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

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