<P> The film won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006 . </P> <P> The film begins with a profile of Kenneth Lay, who founded Enron in 1985 . Two years after its founding, the company becomes embroiled in scandal after two traders begin betting on the oil markets, resulting in suspiciously consistent profits . One of the traders, Louis Borget, is also discovered to be diverting company money to offshore accounts . After auditors uncover their schemes, Lay encourages them to "keep making us millions". However, the traders are fired after it is revealed that they gambled away Enron's reserves; the company is narrowly saved from bankruptcy by the timely intervention of executive Mike Muckleroy, who managed to bluff the market long enough to recover Borget's trading losses and prevent a margin call . After these facts are brought to light, Lay denies having any knowledge of wrongdoing . </P> <P> 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 . </P> <P> With its success in the bull market brought on by the dot - com bubble, Enron seeks to beguile stock market analysts by meeting their projections . Executives push up their stock prices and then cash in their multimillion - dollar options, a process known as "pump and dump". Enron also mounts a PR campaign to portray itself a profitable, prosperous and innovative company, even though its worldwide operations are performing poorly . Elsewhere, Enron begins ambitious initiatives such as attempts to use broadband technology to deliver movies on demand, and "trade weather" like a commodity; both initiatives fail . However, using mark - to - market accounting, Enron records non-existent profits for these ventures . CFO Andrew Fastow creates a network of shell companies designed solely to do business with Enron, for the ostensible dual purposes of sending Enron money and hiding its increasing debt . Fastow also takes advantage of the greed of Wall Street investment banks, pressuring them into investing in these shell entities . However, Fastow has a vested financial stake in these ventures, using them to defraud Enron of tens of millions of dollars in business deals that Fastow effectively conducts with himself . All of this done with the permission of Enron's accounting firm Arthur Andersen and the corporate board . Most of these deals were leveraged with Enron stock, meaning that a significant decline in Enron's stock price could cause Fastow's network of shell companies to fall apart . During this time, Enron's executives encourage the company's employees to invest their savings and retirement funds into Enron stock while they are selling off their shares for millions . </P>

Who pushed the idea of mark-to-market accounting for enron