Enron

Enron, the infamous house of cards that spectacularly collapsed in 2001, was founded in 1985 by Kenneth Lay, who probably didn't envision it becoming the poster child for corporate malfeasance. Known initially for its energy trading prowess, Enron's meteoric rise was marked by a culture of innovation that quickly devolved into a labyrinth of financial deceit. The defining moment in Enron's history was its swift and scandalous fall from grace, when the company’s use of off-the-books partnerships to hide debt and inflate profits was exposed, leading to bankruptcy and a valuation crash from over $60 billion to zilch. Awards like "America's Most Innovative Company" from Fortune now seem like cruel jokes. The executive suite was a rogues' gallery featuring Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andrew Fastow, whose creative accounting and sheer hubris fueled the disaster. The Enron scandal not only decimated the company but also led to the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit firms in the world, and birthed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, aiming to prevent such corporate fraud. In the annals of business history, Enron remains the cautionary tale of unchecked ambition and ethical neglect, a once-glittering empire reduced to a cautionary footnote.