NYT/AP: Witness: Skilling Misled Wall St. Analysts

[DeepModem Mom]

Witness: Skilling Misled Wall St. Analysts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 2, 2006


HOUSTON (AP) -- Former Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling gave misleading information to Wall Street analysts about the earnings of a highly touted business unit in 2001, the company's former head of investor relations testified Thursday.

Skilling did not disclose in conference calls with analysts that the Enron retail energy division had suffered $726 million in first-half losses from its contracts, and insisted that the unit was profitable, Mark Koenig told jurors.

Those losses had been moved into the Enron wholesale division, which was making enough money to absorb them -- but that accounting change was not initially disclosed to analysts, Koenig said....

***

The former executive vice president for investor relations is the first government witness against Skilling and former CEO Kenneth Lay, who are accused of fraud and conspiracy in the spectacular collapse of Enron in 2001.

In his second day on the witness stand, Koenig stopped short again of saying either Skilling or Lay explicitly ordered the books cooked, or that Skilling was aware he was giving analysts bad information....


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Enron-Trial.html

[PassingFair]

1. Let me find my "Duh" file...

:rofl:

Check out the movie, ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM,
but DON'T watch it on a full stomach.

:puke:

[DeepModem Mom]

2. The last line in the post, however, is a bit worrisome. nt

[PassingFair]

3. Bring on Sherron Watkins!

She will not fall short of implicating them.

Have you seen the movie, Deep?

[DeepModem Mom]

4. No, I haven't -- or even "The Smartest Guys"...

I'm embarrassed to admit.

[PassingFair]

5. No need for embarrassment! It just came out on video.

The sickest thing you will come away from the movie is that
if a couple of reporters hadn't started sniffing around
asking questions about the suspicious book-keeping going
on (like picking a scab) I truly believe that they would
STILL BE DOING IT!

They really believed that they had "created" their own
reality.

Anything was A-OK with these guys, their accountants AND the
banks UNTIL they got caught.

Arthur Anderson got what they deserved, and I hope the banks
(Most of the majors, including Citibank)take it up the *ss
during the course of this trial!

[BrotherBuzz]

6. Was the bumbling General Thomas White involved in the retail division?

Is he the same bumbling general that was appointed Secetary of the Army by Bush*? Is he the same General whose official pentagon homepage biography was edited by the pentagon to remove almost all references to Enron?

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19--The Army today gave its reasons for editing nearly out of existence references to Enron in the Army secretary's official homepage biography. The redaction was done to save space on the page and to ensure that Thomas White's history included more words about the future, a spokesman said. Before the edit, White's bio included about 120 words near the top on his 11 years at Enron Energy Services. As of last week, all that verbiage had been trimmed to one small sentence-which was moved to the end of the page. To many observers, that seemed like an effort to rewrite history and soft-pedal the secretary's Enron past, which has drawn scrutiny from reporters and congressional investigators, who want to know his possible role in allegedly hiding at least $500 million in losses at the Enron unit. Also, the Office of Government Ethics is investigating whether White fully disclosed his ownership of Enron stock after he became Army secretary. The heavy editing of the Internet bio was done not to downplay the Enron controversy, a spokesman said, but to save space and emphasize White's current responsibilities and plans. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Larry Gottardi said the Army's web-page editors had changed the bio's font size from 10-pitch to 12-pitch, but still wanted to fit the document on a single page. So something had to go, and they picked Enron, he said. Also, he said, the Army thought it was time to put the past behind. "With the secretary of the Army coming up on one year in office, we thought it was time to put in his intent and vision for the Army," instead of the Enron material, said Gottardi. Defense Week first asked the Army to explain the edits one week ago.

http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=5998