The Enron Corp said Monday that the value of its assets might have been overstated by as much as US$24 billion because of accounting errors and the effects of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing last December.
The company, which disclosed the information in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, also said that its financial statements going back to 1997 should not be relied upon because of serious doubts about their accuracy.
Last November, the last time Enron filed a quarterly profit statement, it listed assets of about US$62 billion.
Now, after one of the largest bankruptcy protection filings in corporate history and a number of federal investigations into potential financial and accounting fraud at the company, Enron is putting the value of its assets closer to US$38 billion.
It is also offering further evidence that the way its finances were managed and reported in recent years was questionable or erroneous.
Enron, which is largely under new management, offered few details Monday about the current value of its assets. Some of the write-down in the value of its assets came about with the Chapter 11 filing, the company said in the filing.
But a significant part of the write-down was because of "possible accounting errors or irregularities," the company said.
The write-down will almost certainly mean that Enron stockholders -- who once held stock valued at about US$90 a share -- will receive nothing out of the bankruptcy case.
Secured debtholders and other creditors have priority, and Enron seems to be worth a little less every day.
Shares of Enron closed at US$0.24 in bulletin board trading Monday, up half a cent.
Enron said in its filing Monday that the stock was virtually worthless and that shareholders would not receive any interest in the reorganized company.
Bankruptcy and securities law experts said the Enron filing was unusual because the company had abandoned the idea of trying to figure out what happened last year.
Enron said Monday that it did not intend to file any financial statements for last year and that the company had not retained an auditor to replace Arthur Andersen. But some bankruptcy experts say that companies that file for Chapter 11 often end up with their books in disarray.
"When companies get into financial difficulty, record-keeping is one of the first things to go," said Lynn LoPucki, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles.
"Sometimes it's intentional, and sometimes it's just difficult to keep track of things."
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