John Arnold: evaluation

Transcript context

…From Dallas, say. Right. Schools like the Vanderbilt and Rice and Emory, University of Texas, et cetera. Would bring them in — I think everybody had a bit of chip on their shoulder when they came in — but brought in this collection of people, and they put them through the traditional Wall Street training and analyst program. But I think what was different about Enron versus the more mature investment banks was, Enron was growing so quickly and the industry was growing so quickly that if you showed any modicum of talent or ability to take responsibility, you would either get promoted or you get hired away by another firm that was trying to copy the Enron business model. As a 21-year-old going in there, my career escalated much quicker than it would have somewhere else. Now, I think there were a lot of benefits for the employee. I think this ended up maybe being part of the downfall of Enron, that responsibility was given to people too early in their career without the necessary controls being in there. I think there was this balance of it was the fantastic place to work as a young person, especially if you showed that you could handle the responsibility. Because I went from age 21, the most junior guy on the trading desk, to age 25 and I was the head trader at the biggest trading firm in the industry. Questions about energy markets. How much conventional capacity in the US has solar really replaced?…

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