 I think we had made some tremendous progress in the six months before I left. |
| We were building a - what I thought was a fantastic company. We had great people. We were changing - we were changing the way the marketplace operated. We were creating a market for natural gas and electricity that had never existed before. |
| Well, as we built the business in the 1990's, as I said, I enjoyed that. |
| Are the things that now, in retrospect, with what I've seen happen to my company, would I have done some things differently? I think - I think we all would do - we would do a number of things differently. |
| Larry, I spent probably most of my professional life helping to build Enron Corporation. I don't think there was anyone that was as shocked by the - by the collapse of the company as I was. |
| I thought the stock was a great buy. I think anybody that bought the stock in 1999 was - saw over the next couple of years a strong growth. During the year of 1999, I significantly increased my ownership of shares in the company. |
| Was I believer in Enron Corporation? Yes, sir, I was. |
| I sold some shares, but on a net basis, significantly increased my ownership. |
| It was a very difficult 10 years of very hard work. |
| Well, actually, I had been working as a consultant to former companies of Enron, or predecessor companies of Enron and, so, I joined in 1990 to really start our wholesale merchant business. |
| The indictment, in a lot of ways, that was the turning point. |
| We built that into a wholesale business that became, really, one of the largest companies in the United States. We had success in building new markets, opening markets for competition, and that takes a personal toll. |
| In the fall of the year 2000, there just happened to be a decision point when they asked me to become Chief Executive Officer of the company. It was a time when, as you remember, we were starting to have some real problems in the California energy markets. |
