Enron

Cause of death

Killed by scandal

Enron filed for Chapter 11 on December 2, 2001, after restatements exposed the off-balance-sheet partnerships that had been hiding its debts and losses.

Formed in 1985 by the merger of Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, Enron spent the 1990s persuading Wall Street that a pipeline company was really a trading floor. The accounting behind that story turned out to be a set of subsidiaries built to park debt where investors could not see it. Dynegy walked away from an $8.4 billion rescue in late November 2001, and the filing came days later, with more than $60 billion in assets, the largest corporate bankruptcy in US history at the time.