Is Qwest The Next Enron?

The Market

from the so-many-choices dept

Who’s next up to bat? It seems that financial columnists are pushing each other over in search of the “next Enron”. Red Herring jumps into the game suggesting that perhaps Qwest is the next Enron by going through a detailed look at how they accounted for the publishing of their phone directories. If you read the article you realize that, yes, Qwest did a few sketchy things to move some revenue around. However, it’s nowhere near as insane as the moves that Enron was making to make their earnings numbers. I also find it amusing that the Herring article seems to make sure to point out over and over and over (and over) again that Qwest’s auditors were (drum roll, please…) Arthur Andersen. That seems to be the strongest link they have to Enron. Yes, the moves are somewhat questionable, but they certainly don’t appear to be Enron-scale trickery.