On Monday, the 23rd anniversary of Enron’s filing for bankruptcy, rumors began to spread that the former Texas energy giant had come back from the dead. A sleek new website, enron.com, appeared to show that the company had done some serious soul-searching and, inexplicably, reincorporated under its original brand. As a modern energy company, it would be dedicated to “solving the global energy crisis,” its press statement reads.
Sherron Watkins, the Enron vice president who first called her company's finances into question, listens to a question following her keynote address to the Women's Economic Club luncheon March 26, 2001, in Dearborn, Michigan. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
The site is packed with the kind of stock art and benign corporate platitudes that lend it credibility. There’s a link to job openings, employee testimonials and even a minute-long video titled “I am Enron,” a movie-trailer-style mashup of cityscape time lapses, rockets launching into space, a ballerina twirling on a beach — a mess of imagery and baritone voiceover so trite it’s almost believable.
But the site and its associated social media accounts are, like Enron’s balance sheets, mostly fiction. Unlike the Enron scandal, however, this one appears to be little more than performance art designed to sell branded hoodies.