Customer Reviews

Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I loved this book. I tried diligently to follow this story as it unfolded in real time in the newspapers. As someone not in the finance industry, I knew it was important but found it near-nigh impossible to understand what had gone wrong and how. In this book, Mimi Swartz provides an insider's look (thanks to Sherron Watkins and many other Enron folk) while still maintaining equipoise. The complex financial instruments that were at the heart of this disaster are explained simply and elegantly. I also learned that, like the Milken/junk bond fiasco, the Enron disaster started with fundamentally important business innovation that is likely to remain with us. Bottom line: I couldn't put it down.

Imagine the life of Sherron Watkins: a posh job with one of the most successful energy companies in the world, all of the amenities that come with wining-and-dining important contacts while negotiating deals worth millions --- and a nagging suspicion that something within the company you're working for isn't quite right. There were thousands of Enron employees, all with the same upward mobility and satisfying salaries that Sherron Watkins possessed. So what set Watkins apart from them? It was the fact that she was willing to risk sacrificing it all to expose the corrupt practices that had made Enron so profitable.

In POWER FAILURE, the entire history of Enron is explored, from its inception in 1985 to its demise in 2001. Written by Mimi Swartz with assistance from whistle-blower Sherron Watkins, this book will take the reader on a journey that includes Enron's earliest successes and failures, the super-charged management conferences, the politically incorrect Enron trading floors and the Senate Hearing Room's investigation and subsequent trial.

But POWER FAILURE is much more than just an expose on a corrupt corporation. It also provides a frightening view on what the big-business atmosphere has become. The story of Enron shows how delicate the balance of politics, money and business practices is, and how thin the line between legal and illegal can be.

Swartz and Watkins effectively tell the story of Enron without a hint of tabloid exploitation. And with all the exploitations that occurred within Enron, that's nothing short of a miracle. They give an accurate, honest perspective on all of the events that took place in the history of the corporation and portray the characters of Enron without bias. That's not to say that there's no negative statements made about people throughout the book --- just that they're given in a diplomatic manner. The book is written in an informative yet entertaining manner, complete with entertaining sidebars and humorous anecdotes to keep the reader's attention. And they have included plenty of pictures to point out just who the evildoers are. This is a must read for business people, tax evaders, anyone who plans to cheat the system, or the average Joe who wants to know what really happened at Enron.

--- Reviewed by Melissa Brown

Power Failure is not a book I would normally read. I'm a straight fiction reader, but picked up this book for some research I was doing. This is a good book that sheds a lot of light onto one of the biggest corporate scandals in history. Now, I'm a pro-business, right-wing Republican and I'm always leary of criticism of big business because many times it is politically motivated and really has no merit. Businesses that make money employ people, businesses that lose money lay off people. No one ever gets a job from a poor person. However, this book shows no political bias, and really doesn't comment on the American system that allowed Enron to fail. Power Failure just lays out the incredible decline of Enron.

The book is co written by Sherron Watkins, an Enron exec who bounced around in the company and became the ultimate whistleblower that brought the company down. She voiced her concerns in an anonymous memo that finally got the attention of Ken Lay and forced action. But so many people had doubts about Ernon along the way, I'm surprised it made it that long.

The book covers Watkins' background, as well as the infamous trio of Ken Lay, Andy Fastow, and Jeffrey Skilling. The story covers Enron from the beginning and follows it as it grows into a international power. The employees grow in cockiness and Enron splits into various factions and soon the controls in place are useless.

The authors really don't make judgments about the characters involved, but through the story they tell, Fastow was the obvious bad guy, setting up multiple special purpose entities that enriched him financially and would have worked if Enron's stock hadn't plummetted. Lay, while definitely part of the problem, really was out of the loop. Skilling was too enamored with earnings growth and meeting projections to worry about how it was actually done.

I took away several things from this book. First, the stock market's focus on earnings per share forced Enron, and probably many other companies, to generate the income necessary to meet the projected growth. This led to balance sheet manipulation and then to fraud. The markets aren't satisfied with consistent earnings, it needs growth. Second, fraud is easy if those in charge don't care about controls, or just bypass them. What could have been done to prevent Enron? I don't know. Its amazing how many people had to miss the obvious for Enron to do what it did. Auther Anderson signed off on everything, the lawyers and the auditors missed it too. Amazing!

Anyone can enjoy this book. The financial details will be over most people's heads (I'm a CPA with an MBA and it confused me), but the authors don't rely solely on the financial details to describe the fraud being committed. This is a good book that will enhance your understanding of how corporations can go from good to bad in an instant. The entire subject is fascinating and I plan on reading more books on the issue.

I am a former Enron employee. In spite of the way the press (and Jeff Skilling's "befuddled" play-acting in the Congressional hearings) portrays it, many of the issues which brought about the firm's demise were not particularly secret. Sherron Watkins acknowledges and/or implies she was aware of many aspects ("I sure hope we make good use of the bad news about Skilling's resignation and do some house cleaning - can we write down some problem assets and unwind raptor? I've been horribly uncomfortable about some of our accounting in the past few years and with the number of 'redeployments' up, I'm concerned some disgruntled employee will tattle." - Watkins E-Mail to Rick Buy, from FERC).

What Watkins really fails to answer in her book is why she waited so long to "blow the whistle" and why there seemed to be no other "whistleblowers." While many people all over the company were aware of the off balance sheet vehicles there seemed to be a cult of denial that either they were a problem or that they showed any signs of impropriety.

In fact, some of the documents, meetings, and conversations Sherron Watkins references as well as some documents turned in for the Congressional hearings show that there were concerns with Raptor, for instance, well over a year before bankruptcy, bubbled up to the Chief Risk Officer, Chief Accounting Officer, and Chief Financial Officer. Watkins perhaps deserves credit for being the first to bring the problems to the level of CEO, but she was the last in a long series of attempts by many individuals, most of whom took greater career risks by criticizing at a time that the firm was still considered "healthy."

Watkins makes her motivations unclear, which is one of the more disturbing aspects of the book - whether she is simply another example of an "Enron-cultured" individual who seizes upon opportunities rather than embracing the spirit of the touted Enron "core values" - Respect, Integrity, Communication, and Excellence.

This books looks at the personalities and people behind the events instead of the business details. The business details are old news and Swartz has done a terrific job of bringing out the human dimension to the company and the people involved.

The writing style made me interested in the people and their behavior, not the details of the deals.

It forced me to into a little self examination around what I would have done if employed at Enron.

And

April 23, 2003
Im just finished Power Failure the inside story of Enrons failure. The book is by Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins of Enron fame. It is a very well written and entertaining: I was pleasantly surprised. Sherron was a key part in the rise and later fall of Enron.

Sherron actually ran some of the Off-Balance-Sheet for Andy Fastnow. The book brought up lots pertinent history of Corporate Americas use of Off-Balance-Sheet stuff and other revenue recognition policies and how the accounting firms aided and abetted. The book gave rise to one important question, how was it able to happen: its evident that there is more fraud to be discovered.

Its my opinion that this book will be included in the other now famous period pieces like: Where are the Customers' Yachts? By Fred Schwed, The Great Crash by John Kenneth Galbraith and
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre

What happened at Enron reminds me of a Tom Clancy book, lots of movement and bad people.

I recommend reading these 2 books together because TSGITR gets really dense in places, making for draining reading, but since the story is too incredible to put down, Power Failure takes it to a lighter level. I do think Power Failure hones in more on Andy Fastow, as co-writer Sherron Watkins worked directly with him, and the photograph of his little art project is downright chilling (you'll see what I'm referring to). Power Failure still has some great meat to chew on however; the proximity that Sherron Watkins had to the main players, particularly Lay and Fastow, lends itself to the amazing characterizations of these guys on paper. The two books follow a similar chronology and highlights, so it is interesting to compare the slight variations of the same episodes. Even though Sherron Watkins makes the most of her edge, being a primary player in the saga, the tip of my hat goes to TSGITR's writers for their downright nasty investigative reporting.

This is the story of a company managed by smart, very smart people. There is no guarantee that smart people are honest. The best part of the book is that it comes from someone who was a part of this smart team, not so smart to reach the top, but was smart enough to be at the right places to know the whole story. Sherron Watkins not only knows the story well but also narrates it at the same pace and excitement of a fast track company. Had Enron published this book, it would have made money trading on the manuscript before it had reached the press. It would have booked a few million dollars in profit from sale of future editions using the "mark to market" route. Some smart executive who had thought of this brilliant idea would have walked away with a fat bonus even before the first copy of the book had left the printing press. This was Enron.

What started as a successful company that transported gas, ends up trading in everything it can lay its hands on. Its accounting innovations are nothing short of manipulations of elephantine proportions, carried out with blessings of the now defunct audit firm. No one bothered as long as money flowed in, into the right pockets. " You can't fool all the people all the time", but this story ends when almost all the people who invested in Enron end up as fools. This is the story of a company that once boasted of becoming "The World's greatest company". Well, this is not a story.

The greatest reason to read this book is to get an appreciation for the scale of the collapse that was Enron. Also, you will get a description of what life was like at Enron on a personal level from an insider's view, as well as their view on what it had to do with the Company's downfall. Yes - this is one person's account, but there's enough factual information to back them up on the important points.

There are many books that are more technically oriented and probably less biased. Unfortunately, for this layman, they don't make very good bedtime reading.

This book offered an unseen perspective into details about ENRON's dealings and people which should illuminate both old and new views about corporate governance, accounting policies, regulatory climate and unseen involvement by parties which contributed to the collaspe of ENRON.