BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : FEBRUARY 12, 2001 ISSUE
COVER STORY Derring-Do in the Corner Office Ask Jeffrey K. Skilling's friends about the soon-to-be chief of Enron Corp. (ENE), and you're likely to hear some tale about his adventure-seeking. Like the time he led some executives and customers on a 1,000-mile dirt-bike trip through Mexico, returning home black and blue. Or how in planning for a coming African safari he wished for the kind of outing ''where someone could actually get killed,'' says Kenneth D. Rice, head of Enron's new broadband-services business. For a man who spends his life managing risk at the nation's largest energy merchant, Skilling's out-of-the-office pursuits might seem perplexing. But Enron executives insist that CEO-elect Skilling, 47, combines an odd mixture of tight risk-management controls with a freewheeling entrepreneurial style that has helped boost Enron from $4 billion to more than $100 billion in revenues since he joined in 1990. ''He's the most innovative guy I've ever been around,'' says Richard A. Causey, chief accounting officer. BOY WONDER. From an early age, Skilling, the son of a sales manager for an Illinois valve company, showed the same kind of supreme self-confidence and derring-do that are his trademarks now. Consider his first full-time job at age 13, as chief production director at a startup Aurora (Ill.) TV station. Skilling's first duties were to paint walls at the station, but he quickly learned how to operate every piece of equipment in the place. When the older production director quit in a huff on opening day, Skilling was the only one qualified to take the job. The station went on the air each day at 4 p.m., when Skilling's mother could drop him off after school. ''I liked being successful when I was working, and I was smart,'' says Skilling, with no trace of modesty. After graduating with a degree in applied science from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Skilling went to work for two years for First City National Bank of Houston, first in operations and then in asset and liability management. After he left, the bank went bust when oil and real estate crashed, ruining the lives of some of Skilling's former colleagues. He credits that experience in part for his intense focus on risk controls at Enron. The bank ''had taken this enormous concentrated risk and wasn't able to lay it off,'' he says. After graduating in the top 5% of his Harvard MBA class in 1979, Skilling joined McKinsey & Co. in Houston. He alerted executives at one of his energy clients, an Omaha-based pipeline company called InterNorth, to looming problems with overpriced gas contracts. With his help, they created one of the first U.S. gas-marketing organizations. When InterNorth and Houston Natural Gas merged to form Enron in 1985, CEO Kenneth L. Lay hired McKinsey and Skilling to help rev up new products. In 1987, Skilling led the creation of the first forward contracts in the gas business, which producers could use to secure financing. When Lay offered him a job in the fledgling trading business, he took it. He rose to CEO by outperforming Enron's asset-development group, which delivered smaller returns on costly overseas power plants. Skilling has never looked back. ''I knew this was big,'' he says. And getting bigger all the time. By Wendy Zellner in Houston _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS Enron's Power Play COVER IMAGE: Power Broker CHART: Enron Taps Volatile Energy Markets...To Dominate Power Sales... TABLE: The Enron Way TABLE: Is There Anything They Can't Trade? Enron's Big Wheel Has a Heavy Tread Derring-Do in the Corner Office RESUME: Jeffrey K. Skilling Commentary: Enron Hasn't Made Many Friends in the Third World (int'l edition) ONLINE EXTRA: Q&A with Enron's Skilling INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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