Английский язык. Практический курс для решения бизнес-задач

32. joint venture (JV) – совместное предприятие

33. whistle-blower – лицо, поднявшее тревогу при обнаружении злоупотребления

34. quarter (Q) n – квартал

quarterly a – квартальный

35. treasury n – казначейство, казначейский департамент

treasurer n – казначей

36. file a suit – подать иск

Exercise 1. Answer the following questions.

1. What was Enron’s attitude towards tangible assets? 2. For what purpose were Enron’s partnerships set up? 3. How was Enron established and how did it evolve over 15 years? 4. How did professionals initially perceive Enron? 5. Why was Enron having financial problems? 6. What did Enron do to counteract the growing competition in energy trading? 7. What was the financial strategy that Enron employed? 8. How did its CFO contribute to Enron’s collapse? 9. What kind of problems did Enron have with its international projects? 10. What were the key strategic mistakes that Enron made?

Exercise 2*. Find terms in the text that match definitions given below and make sentences of your own with each term.

1. insolvent debtor

2. a person appointed and authorized to examine books of account

3. a rival for sales of the same or similar merchandise

4. the legal combination of corporations in which their assets are transferred to the resulting successor corporation

5. the aid or award given to a student by a fund, school, or institution, on the basis of his merit or need

6. the act of pledging, obligating, or engaging oneself

7. to equalize or counterbalance; to compensate

8. a process instituted in a court of justice for the enforcement or protection of a right or claim

9. the innermost or the most essential part of anything

10. accumulation of stores or materials beforehand; a stipulation

Exercise 3. Name Enron’s stakeholders and describe how they were affected by its collapse.

Exercise 4. Write speeches for the prosecutor and counsel for defense that they could used during the Enron trial.

Exercise 5*. Fill in the blanks using terms given below.

The Pride and the Fall of Enron

While Enron grew rapidly through the 1990s, some of the worst manifestations of its culture – obsessions with……… the stock price and exotic accounting – were also growing. Though the corporation’s character flaws can be traced to its earliest days, they flourished under top executive Jeff Skilling. He didn’t act in a vacuum. Enron had a distracted, hands-off chairman, a compliant…… of directors and an impotent……. of accountants, auditors and lawyers. But it was Skilling’s relentless push for creativity and……… that fostered a growth-at-any-cost culture, drowning out voices of caution and overriding all……….

The creative aggressiveness Skilling deemed essential to dominating new markets went untempered by good business sense or……. discipline. The same……. lauded as key to the company’s future were also key to its collapse. «It was all about taking……. now and worrying about the details later,» said one former Enron deal maker. «The Enron system was just ripe for………»

A key component of Enron’s culture was…… a certain kind of person. In the late 1990s, the…….. department began giving…….. a new set of «cheat sheets» on what to look for in……. candidates. «It was not your typical, hard-working, extracurricular-activities type of student. It was a sharp-dressing extrovert, someone who would fit in as a ruthless trader. We weren’t looking for softies.»

Drawn from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Rice, and other leading universities, the new hires were smart, even brilliant, but did not prove to be good…… «If you keep telling people how smart they are, after awhile they start to think they have nothing else they need to learn,» said one former manager, «It was such a high-achievement…….. that there wasn’t close……. to make sure people learned the……. of good management.»

To…….. his particular………, Skilling encouraged all…… to use an………. process. That process – «rank and yank,» as it came to be called – came to epitomize the company culture. Employees spent about two weeks annually……. fellow employees’ value to the company, from 1 down to 5. The process could be brutal, and often led to employees……… their peers to make themselves look better. And each……. was forced to rank a fifth of the employees as 5s.

«We hired the best and brightest people, but now they were telling us we had to arbitrarily…….. 20% of them. Why would we want to do that?» a manager said. «Every company in America uses some sort of…….. system, but the way it was used at Enron was just too divisive.»

The cultural changes in the company even threatened the very language that defined the company’s……..: respect, integrity, communication and excellence. In the late 1990s, the company’s Visions and Values…….. considered expressing the principles with words such as «smart,» «bold» and «aggressive». The effort……., but it spoke volumes about what was happening at Enron. Smart, bold and aggressive people tend to get impatient with……. The relentless……… to create new ways to make money – or appear to make money – spawned an environment where raising questions about a……. was considered disloyal or, worse, an indication someone «didn’t get it».

Some observers believe Skilling’s style was a product of his……… with McKinsey. «Rank and yank» was a variation on a system developed by McKinsey. The «asset light» mantra that Skilling preached – of a company that owned few hard assets and made all its money off……. and services – was also a McKinsey-…….. concept. But like many……… firms, McKinsey has gained a reputation as a flock of thinkers, not doers.

Skilling’s background was reflected in his……. approach to details. The McKinsey influence can also be seen in his belief that Enron could adapt the…….. it developed in creating energy trading markets to such disparate products as Internet bandwidth, paper products and even weather. The belief was so strong that it wasn’t felt necessary to hire……… with telecommunications…….. to build its broadband business. Instead, it simply gave the job to successful gas traders.

«These were people that didn’t know how to spell `broadband’, never mind…… that business,» said a former senior vice president. «But if you questioned them and the wisdom of the business, you would be ridiculed because you `didn’t get it’. «And when a business did fail or a deal fell apart, more effort was put into hiding the consequences than owning up to the problem. Debt and losses were anathema to Enron’s…………

Source: Tom Fowler, Houston Chronicle, Oct. 20, 2002 (excerpts)

Terms.

consulting, employee-evaluation, rating, hands-off, recruiters, profits, vision, trading, job, financial statements, ranking, human resources, experience, environment, bonuses, values, board, checks and balances, executives, staff, competitiveness, fiscal, decisions, corruption, hiring, managers, monitoring, enforce, units, downgrading, division, fire, Task Force, rules, demand, deal, endorsed, skills, run, failed, background, basics

Exercise 6. Translate into English.