ABSTRACT

Fortune magazine named Enron America’s “most innovative” company six years in a row.2 Industry observers marveled at Enron’s transformation from traditional natural gas distributor to high-flying commodities broker. CEO Ken Lay boasted in an August 1996 interview that 40 percent of Enron’s 1995 earnings came from businesses that did not exist in 1985. And Lay expected the trend to continue. “We expect that five years from now, over 40 percent of our earnings will come from businesses that did not exist five years ago. It’s a matter of re-creating the company and the businesses we’re in,” Lay explained.3