Email Analysis

by Vibhu Bhan

Enron Emails For Debt/Liability Transfer Chatter

talkAItive searches through emails

Enron Email Dataset

The Enron email dataset contains 500,000 emails generated by employees of the Enron Corporation. Released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the investigation of Enron's collapse inspired our research to find chatter related to "debt/liability transfer" contexts.

Research Parameters

  • We utilized 20% of the dataset with focus on chatter from Jan - Dec 2001
  • We focused on chatter related to risk, debt, liability transfer as the root contexts

Let’s Dive Into The Details Related To Key Contexts Discovered

talkAItive identifies the contextual and summary sentences with a focus on chatter related to “debt”, “partnerships”, “transfer losses”.

On observing the source of this chatter, related to emails which have Enron Mentions, Merger News Articles as the subject title.

This email thread got shared 1200 times across the company, all the way To: Ken Lay’s inbox with over 1 MM individual chatter data points connected to these emails.

2001 Q2

Top Contexts

  • move debt off its
  • traditionally collateralized debt obligations docs
  • partnerships move debt off its
  • keeping the debt off its
  • dollars debt off the

Top Summaries

  • move debt from its books
  • the partnerships keep related debt off its books
  • move debt off its books and lower its tax liabilities well
  • partnerships move debt off its books concealing the company
  • dollars debt off the company books
  • the company was using the partnerships hide losses and debt

talkAItive identifies another context “off balance sheet” with related 267 email threads across everyone in the company hierarchy, which you would expect with social & media chatter.

As we dive deeper into the contexts and summaries, we found a variety of internal firm assets connected to this context which can be seen in the visual below i.e. chatter related to internal operations and managing off balance sheet structures.

2001 Q4 - Part 1

Top Contexts

  • earnings and balance sheet items
  • disappear from balance sheets repay
  • from balance sheets repay bondholders
  • off its balance sheets likely
  • its balance sheets likely ensured
  • complex off balance sheet arrangements
  • off balance sheet arrangements used
  • disclosures off balance sheet deals
  • off balance sheet deals

2001 Q4 - Part 2

Top Contexts

  • billion off balance sheet loans
  • off balance sheet loans and
  • incorporating off balance sheet entries
  • off balance sheet entries related
  • off the balance sheet allowed
  • books the balance sheets and
  • the balance sheets and income
  • controversial off balance sheet arrangement

Top Summaries

  • off balance sheet transactions through limited partnerships
  • the partnerships referred form off balance sheet financing
  • off balance sheet partnerships special purpose entities
  • balance sheet while simultaneously booking profit from the partnerships
  • enron has used opaque grid off balance sheet partnerships shelter

Top Summaries

  • the facility allows enron raise cash off balance sheet without leaving with short positions our book
  • the partnerships and off balance sheet vehicles influence its report
  • has guaranteed least billion off balance sheet loans and the hidden and more...