The reverberations were felt up and down the streets of downtown Houston when Enron collapsed 10 years ago, shattering confidence in the energy trading market on which the company had been built.
Competitors to Enron, ranging from Dynegy to El Paso, had also diversified into energy trading. They hoped to mimic Enron’s shift from slow and steady businesses, such as power production and pipelines, into higher gear and higher risk trading. And it had worked – for a time.
“There was a lot of trading for trading’s sake,” says Mark Williams, a finance lecturer at Boston University’s School of Management, a former energy trading floor executive and author of Uncontrolled Risk, about the collapse of Lehman Brothers.