Mark-to-market is a business rarity -- an accounting term that draws reactions from people who don't know spreadsheets from bedsheets. Mark-to-market, which we'll call MTM, evokes images of Enron ...

Troy Segal is an editor and writer. She has 20+ years of experience covering personal finance, wealth management, and business news. Gregory Smith / Getty Images Before its demise, Enron was a ...

In the early 1990s, Enron was the largest seller of natural gas in North America. Ten years later, the company no longer existed due to its accounting scandal. The Role of Mark-to-Market ...

But at energy trading companies, a large portion of earnings may come from the current value of long-term contracts -- "mark-to-market" accounting. If Enron sells a 10-year gas-supply contract to ...

When those investments turned south, Skilling was able to paper over the losses through techniques such as “mark-to-market” accounting, which allowed Enron to claim immediate profits from ...

The technique allowed Enron to have higher current profits, or so it seemed. In addition to market-to-market accounting, Enron also used special purpose entities for dump sites for its troubled ...

What such “innovation” cloaked with Enron were dodgy accounting practices (mark-to-market accounting, the use of off-balance sheet vehicles, and the like) and related-party self-dealing ...

Enron's cooking of the books, most notably it's "mark-to-market accounting," triggered a massive fallout when the company fell apart in 2001. CEO Jeff Skilling and Chairman Ken Lay were convicted ...