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Business
Words in the News
Friday 30 November 2001
Vocabulary from the business news. Listen to and read the report
then find explanations of difficult words below.
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Collapse of Enron
Summary: The world's largest energy trading company, Enron, has over sixteen billion dollars of debts, and faces more than twenty law suits from investors, who claim they were misled about the true state of the group's finances. This report from Mark Gregory:
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The
News 
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Enron operates in forty countries, and did a hundred billion dollars of business last year. At the peak it ranked at number seven in the Fortune list of the top five hundred American companies.
Most of its business takes place in the US but it's also been a major force in power generation in nations as diverse as Britain, India and Nigeria. Based in Houston, Texas, Enron was born from the merger of two gas pipeline companies in the US in the 1980s.
It owns electricity generating power stations around the world, but in recent years its main business has been in trading energy on the commodity markets. This has become a huge business with the liberalisation of the power sector in the US and other countries.
Mark Gregory, BBC, London
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The
Words
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at the peak
at its highest value
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ranked
to be at a certain position on a scale
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the Fortune list
list of the biggest companies in the United States
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a major force
a powerful company
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as diverse as
as different as
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merger
when two or more companies are brought together to form one
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the commodity markets
where goods and services are bought and sold
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liberalisation
a reduction in regulations
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Read
more about this story |
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