who pushed the idea of mark-to-market accounting for enron
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room Lay hires Jeffrey Skilling, a visionary who joins Enron on the condition that they use mark-to-market accounting, allowing the company to record potential profits on certain projects immediately after contracts were signed, regardless of the actual profits that the deal would generate. This gives Enron the ability to subjectively give the appearance of being a profitable company even if it wasn't. With the vision of transforming Enron from an energy supplier to an energy trader, Skilling imposes his interpretation of Darwinian worldview on Enron by establishing a review committee that grades employees and annually fires the bottom fifteen percent, a process nicknamed within the company as "rank and yank". This creates a highly competitive and brutal working environment. Skilling hires lieutenants who enforce his directives inside Enron, known as the "guys with spikes." They include J. Clifford Baxter, an intelligent but manic-depressive executive; and Lou Pai, the CEO of Enron Energy Services, who is notorious for using shareholder money to feed his obsessive habit of visiting strip clubs. Pai abruptly resigns from EES with $250 million, soon after selling his stock. Despite the amount of money Pai has made, the divisions he formerly ran lost $1 billion, a fact covered up by Enron. Pai uses his money to buy a large ranch in Colorado, becoming the second-largest landowner in the state.