Until the spring of 2001, the Houston energy giant Enron
epitomized the triumph of the new economy. Feared by rivals,
worshiped by investors, Enron seemingly could do no wrong.
Its profits rose every quarter; its stock price surged ever
upward; its leaders were hailed as visionaries.
Then a young Fortune writer named Bethany McLean
wrote an article posing a simple question - How, exactly,
does Enron make its money? - and the company's house of
cards began to collapse. Though other business scandals
would follow, none has had the shattering effect of Enron's
bankruptcy, which caused Americans to lose faith in a system
that rewarded top insiders with millions of dollars while
small investors, including many Enron employees, lost
everything.
Despite enormous media coverage of
Enron, the definitive story of its astonishing rise and fall
comes alive for the first time in this gripping narrative,
by McLean and her Fortune colleague Peter Elkind. Drawing
on a wide range of private documents and well-placed
sources, many of them exclusive, McLean and Elkind lead you
behind closed doors and deep into Enron's past, to pierce
the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the company's inner
workings and corrupt culture.
The Smartest
Guys in the Room is fundamentally a human drama -- of
people drunk on their own success, people so ambitious, so
certain of their own brilliance, so fueled by greed and
hubris that they believed they could fool the world. The
book explores the motives, thoughts, and secret fears of a
fascinating array of characters, including:
* Ken
Lay, the genial but clueless CEO who reveled in the
trappings of his office but ducked the responsibilities.
From the earliest days of Enron, his weakness allowed greedy
lieutenants to run amok.
* Jeff Skilling, the
brooding, mercurial genius who was the architect of Enron's
greatest triumphs-and its ultimate disgrace. "I am
Enron," he once boasted. As the company unraveled, so did
Skilling.
* Rebecca Mark, the glamorous "It" girl
of Enron International who raced around the globe in high
style and battled Skilling for control of the company.
* Andy Fastow, the brutally ambitious, deeply
insecure whiz kid. Inside Enron his colleagues marveled at
how his complex schemes allowed the company to scam Wall
Street-not realizing that he was secretly scamming Enron.
* Ken Rice, the Midwestern farm boy who was seduced
by Enron's fast-money culture and who cashed in while hyping
a high-tech business that didn't exist.
* Cliff
Baxter, the manic deal maker and Skilling confidant who
resented Fastow's murky self-dealing. "He's a goddamn master
criminal," Baxter would rail.
Just as Watergate was
the defining political story of our time, so Enron is the
biggest business story of our time. And just as All the
President's Men was the one Watergate book that gave
readers the full story, with all the drama and nuance,
The Smartest Guys in the Room is the one book you
have to read to understand this amazing business saga.
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