Forensic Finance: Enron and Others

Abstract

In finance, as in pathology, we can learn more from failure than from success. This lecture examines three famous financial failures, Metallgesellschaft’s oil futures business, LTCM and related hedge fund failures, and the current travails of ENRON, and performs a post mortem on each to see what can be learned. Not surprisingly, the cause of death was similar in each case, or, to put it more familiarly, history always repeats itself.