Harvard's Enron Connections

About Hervert S. Winokur Jr. resignation

Peter Cohan

Today (June 2002) Enron announced the resignation of Herbert S. Winokur Jr., chairman and chief executive of Capricorn Holdings Inc. of Greenwich, Connecticut, from Enron’s board on which he served since 1985. Winokur’s resignation draws attention to the many ties between Harvard and Enron.

Consider the following connections:

Winokur. Winokur who chaired the finance committee of Enron’s board announced his resignation from the Harvard Corporation board on which he served in April 2002 but remains a member of the board of Harvard Management Company which manages Harvard’s $18 billion endowment. Winokur was among the directors who voted to suspend Enron’s conflict of interest rules in June 1999, allowing Andrew S. Fastow, Enron's chief financial officer, to set up the off-balance-sheet partnerships the exposure of which contributed to Enron’s demise. Winokur earned an undergraduate and doctoral degree from Harvard;
HBS. Jeff Skilling, former CEO, is a graduate of Harvard’s business school (HBS). During a 1978 class at the business school, Skilling was asked what he would do if he ran a company that manufactured a product that may be, but wasn't definitively, harmful - even potentially fatal - to the consumer. Skillings’ notion: “I'd keep making and selling the product. My job as a businessman is to be a profit center and to maximize return to the shareholders. It's the government's job to step in if a product is dangerous." In addition, five HBS case studies have touted the Enron model as innovative and worthy of replication. Glowing studies of Enron were produced by HBS as recently as August of 2001, just before Enron imploded;
McKinsey. Prior to working at Enron, Skilling worked at consulting giant, McKinsey & Co. where his boss, D. Ronald Daniel was a partner. Skilling worked for Daniel during the 1980s when McKinsey helped Enron to design its unsustainable business model. Daniel currently serves as Harvard’s treasurer and chairs Harvard Management. In addition, Richard Foster, a McKinsey director, attended board meetings at which Enron’s debt-concealing special purpose entities were discussed;
Belfer. Today also marked the resignation of Robert A. Belfer, who holds a Harvard JD. Belfer, whose family reportedly lost $2 billion by holding on to its plummeting Enron shares, had been an Enron director since the mid-1980s. A company he started in 1992, Belco Oil & Gas Corp., had multimillion-dollar hedging agreements with an Enron subsidiary. Belfer also donated $7.5 million to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, leading to the creation of The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA) which is “the hub of research, teaching, and training in international security affairs, environmental and resource issues, science and technology policy, and conflict studies at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.” The Belfer Center had allegedly done consulting work for Enron; and
Highfields. In an April 2001 conference call, Richard Grubman, managing director of Highfields Capital Management, prompted an obscenity-laced screed from Skilling when Grubman questioned Enron’s lack of balance sheet disclosure. Highfields manages $ 4.8 billion in total assets. Harvard's endowment first invested $ 500 million with start-up Highfields in 1998 and has since invested more. It is estimated that Highfields earned at least a $50 million profit from short selling nearly 3 million Enron shares prior to its collapse.

How much of Enron’s rise and fall can be attributed to its Harvard connections? More leg work would be needed to know for sure.

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