Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…Speaking of Skilling quitting, let's move the story towards that, shall we? Yeah. The first cracks in the armor starts in September of 2000. The stock is still on its way up and hasn't peaked yet, but you have a short seller named Jim Chanos, who for the first time, is starting to make noise around just the most basic fundamentals here. Hey, I'm reading your quarterly reports, and they're completely impossible. You're technically disclosing a bunch of stuff. I have no idea what you're disclosing. Can you help me understand the business? How do you make money? You then start to have reporters getting involved, because reporters love getting tips from short sellers, because short sellers have a massive financial incentive to go and investigate and figure out what companies are going to fail, and that's a really good ‘where there's smoke, there's fire’ for reporters, so reporters start getting involved. The big question is, how does Enron make money? As people start digging in with Skilling, with Lay, with Fastow, and granting interviews and doing this stuff... Nobody can figure it out.…

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