What are the major lessons learned from Enron Broadband?

Thanks for the A2A. I'm sort of inextricably tied to the whole Enron Broadband thing, so let's see what sort of light I can shed on this. I covered some of this in Stan Hanks' answer to Why did Enron's bandwidth trading business fail? read more

Enron Broadband (actually, Enron Communications at the time) was on track for an IPO in late 1999, and in May we were getting ready for the road show. read more

These lessons include the use of leverage, of structuring, of special purpose entities, of mark-to-market valuations and of cash – or crucially a lack thereof. But first a little history. Enron was a US energy trading firm based in Houston, Texas which grew to dominate the US electricity industry. read more

This is the key lesson that the Enron bankruptcy holds for the investor. (To learn more about how investors were led astray in the Enron scandal, check out Enron's Collapse: The Fall Of A Wall Street Darling. read more