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Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron |
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List Price: $26.95
Our Price: $4.83
Your Save: $ 22.12 ( 82% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Portfolio Hardcover
Average Customer Rating:  
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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.790973
EAN: 9781591840084
ISBN: 1591840082
Label: Portfolio Hardcover
Manufacturer: Portfolio Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: 2003-10-13
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Release Date: 2003-10-13
Studio: Portfolio Hardcover
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Editorial Reviews:
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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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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: The Crooked E
Comment: This book is about a reality so different from my own, I use it as escapism. Although the transactions described are Byzantine, the book nevertheless holds the reader's attention for over 400 pp. Events are presented roughly chronologically; the characters and information accrue like an approaching balloon note; some questions are answered only after the reader has had time to stew. Tension mounts as the house of cards gets impossibly higher!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lehman brothers: Chapt 11
Comment: Actually read this a few months back but thought I'd pen this short review on the day Lehman brothers filed for Chapt 11, Merril Lynch bought for a bargain by BOA, and AIG "restructuring" (ie throwing everything it can overboard). But, I hear you cry, what does Enron have to do with merchant banks? Well if you read this excellent book, you'll find that by the end of its existence Enron was essentially a merchant bank. It traded risk (and made some handsome profits doing so). The original hard infrastructure (real things that make real money in real, steady time) based pipeline and energy distribution business having being stripped, sold or just neglected. It wasn't the byzantine, dishonest finest pyramids, that really led to the fall, although they greatly speeded it up. It was the out of control trading floors. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Making your core business the trading of risk, is, well, a risky business. Add to this a complete lack of any moral compass, plus the attitude that you are always smarter than the other guy and this is what you get in the end - a dime sale of your computers, carpets and inspiring front lobby art.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Advanced accounting shenanigans don't create value
Comment: Very well researched account of the rise and downfall of Enron. It chronicles the start and the ultimate demise of this company, which never really had a great business model - (sorry Jeff Skilling). It is amazing that so many "smart" people did not understand basic business skills and the simple difference between economic and accounting gains. Jeff Skilling, a former McKinsey partner, should have stayed with the consulting firm where theory is safely differentiated from real world. Skillings' first mistake was not understanding his own limitations first and foremost. He breaks out a bottle of champagne to celebrate SEC's acceptance of a change in Enron's accounting system. Accounting does not create value - it does not appear that many Enron executives (especially Skillings who should have known better) understood this.
McLean and Elkind do a nice job presenting some of the schemes and scams that Enron executives used to make themselves look good to investors, analysts, bankers and the general public. There are some scams that I had a hard time following, but the reader will grasp the general idea behind them. In light of recent accounting scandals, this is an important book to read for any investors and the public in general. Unfortunately the book ends around summer of 2002 and we do not find out what happens to some of the key characters. My interest was sparked enough that I researched some of the more recent findings after reading the book. Despite its difficulty to read at times I highly recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Corporate arrogance gone amok
Comment: When one reads 'The Smartest Guys In The Room' there is one question that keeps recurring. How did no-one at Enron foresee the company's grizzly demise. The folly of mark to market accounting was reason enoough to expect certain problems, but the endless treadmill that Enron placed itself on concerning the stock price made those problems an inevitability.
Although Elkind and Mclean portray the story well, they really don't have to do much with the material to make a fantastic story of the blistering story with which Enron rose and the calamitous pace at which it fell. The Enron tale is one of brash arrogance in almost every possible facet of a business, allied to a stubborn refusal to accept the economic reality even when it is staring you in the face. The real shame about the whole mess is that these were bright guys and this was potentially a great company. All they had to do was have a little common sense and regular business accumen and they could have been on to a real winner here.
I would ultimately say to everyone that has an interest in business or the financial markets, however slight, that this book is a thumping good read and is worth some money ouot of anyone's pocket.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fascinating bio of Enron for the layman, though a bit over-dramatized
Comment: This is probably the best corporate bio of Enron you'll find, at least for now. Very readable, the pages turn quick and it never gets boring. Some of the technical accounting details were beyond me, but it wasn't difficult to understand the bottom line: These schemes were illicitly lining a few pockets with massive amounts of cash.
The amount of work that went into this account is mind boggling. I can't imagine the hours of conducting interviews and poring through complex legal and accounting documents to understand what happened over Enron's 15-20 years of existence.
However, as with most journalistic novels like this, you need to be careful to not be influenced by the slant of the prose. I wouldn't say that this account is neutral enough to be good for a "historical" perspective. It was written to sell first, inform second. There are countless statements throughout that could be construed as overly opinionated and even unfair to some of the players.
This is the story of Enron for the layman, not for an MBA student performing a case study on the company. If you're an interested layman like me, do yourself a favor and read it!
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