<P> The combination of these issues later resulted in the bankruptcy of the company, and the majority of them were perpetuated by the indirect knowledge or direct actions of Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, and other executives such as Rebecca Mark . Lay served as the chairman of the company in its last few years, and approved of the actions of Skilling and Fastow although he did not always inquire about the details . Skilling constantly focused on meeting Wall Street expectations, advocated the use of mark - to - market accounting (accounting based on market value, which was then inflated) and pressured Enron executives to find new ways to hide its debt . Fastow and other executives "created off - balance - sheet vehicles, complex financing structures, and deals so bewildering that few people could understand them ." </P> <P> Enron and other energy suppliers earned profits by providing services such as wholesale trading and risk management in addition to building and maintaining electric power plants, natural gas pipelines, storage, and processing facilities . When accepting the risk of buying and selling products, merchants are allowed to report the selling price as revenues and the products' costs as cost of goods sold . In contrast, an "agent" provides a service to the customer, but does not take the same risks as merchants for buying and selling . Service providers, when classified as agents, are able to report trading and brokerage fees as revenue, although not for the full value of the transaction . </P> <P> Although trading companies such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch used the conventional "agent model" for reporting revenue (where only the trading or brokerage fee would be reported as revenue), Enron instead selected to report the entire value of each of its trades as revenue . This "merchant model" was considered much more aggressive in the accounting interpretation than the agent model . Enron's method of reporting inflated trading revenue was later adopted by other companies in the energy trading industry in an attempt to stay competitive with the company's large increase in revenue . Other energy companies such as Duke Energy, Reliant Energy, and Dynegy joined Enron in the wealthiest 50 of the Fortune 500 mainly due to their adoption of the same trading revenue accounting as Enron . </P> <P> Between 1996 and 2000, Enron's revenues increased by more than 750%, rising from $13.3 billion in 1996 to $100.8 billion in 2000 . This extensive expansion of 65% per year was unprecedented in any industry, including the energy industry which typically considered growth of 2--3% per year to be respectable . For just the first nine months of 2001, Enron reported $138.7 billion in revenues, which placed the company at the sixth position on the Fortune Global 500 . </P>

Banks such as merrill lynch took part in the accounting fraud by