Can you please summerise briefly the Enron Arthur Anderson scandal?

See the various Enron/Andersen scandals below and take your pick:

Earnings management scandal:
Enron was a multifaceted company that attempted to hide losses by creating shell companies (many of which were partially owned by Andrew Fastow, Enron CFO) and thereby give the impression to stockholders that they were doing very well when in fact they were not.

Auditing scandal:
Arthur Andersen was enron's auditor and enron had in fact disclosed the existence of some of these shell companies (partnerships) to Andersen to see if Andersen felt these were ok or not. Andersen's accouting think tank ruled that the partnerships were NOT ok but left the accounting decision up to the Enron engagement partner, David Duncan. In order to keep them as a client David Duncan allowed Enron to use these entities to hide losses. When the SEC began investigating Andersen started to shred their documents of the controversial entities.

When Andersen was indicted for obstruction of justice they were barred from auditing publicly traded companies which was their main source of revenue.

Stock Analysts Scandal:
With the exception of the two analysts from Fortune magazine who figured Enron out before everyone else did (and eventually wrote the book and movie Enron:The Smartest Guys in the Room) many analysts left Enron as a buy rating until the week before they declared bankruptcy.

SEC scandal:
Technically the SEC is responsible for monitoring publicly traded companies and their auditors. Many critics allege that the SEC was performing their work based on stories in the Wall Street Journal instead of actual investigative work.

Ethical scandal for the Enron executives and Enron pensioners:
Many enron executives had received stock options which gave them tons of stock, which was very valuable when Enron did well. The pension of many enron employees were also invested solely in Enron stock, no other companies. When Enron started to go downhill the executives started to sell their stock while still telling others that Enron was a good company. However, in order to slow the sales of Enron stock the executives barred employees from selling the enron stock in their pension plans. So employees were stuck with stock that was becoming worthless simply because of an employee benefits administration decision.

I hope this helps.

I hope this helps