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Looking for love after Enron at power luncheon

Paul Thomasch and Carolyn Koo in New York

They showed up at a packed hotel ballroom in midtown Manhattan on Thursday looking for love.

Dressed in expensive suits and exuding confidence, they joked, commiserated and bantered with scores of investors, money managers and analysts determined not to have their hearts broken by fast talk and fancy presentations.

Not this time.

So Calpine Corp chief executive Peter Cartwright, Dynegy Inc president Stephen Bergstrom and a handful of other senior executives from energy companies turned on the charm, trying to distance themselves from scandal and win over some 200 people at a conference on Valentine's Day.

"We realise, and certainly you realise, the world has changed," Clark Smith, president of El Paso Corp's North American merchant energy business, told the crowd. But El Paso, he emphasised, is not at all "similar to the other company that begins with an E."

Enron Corp was once the darling of the energy business and the talk of conferences, such as this one sponsored by investment bank UBS Warburg, because of its sexy profile, high stock price and cutting edge business plan.

Now energy companies are taking pains to assure investors they have little or nothing in common with Enron, the subject of congressional investigations and shareholder lawsuits after questions about dubious accounting helped drive it into bankruptcy.

"We've made the case, and it's an easy case to make, that we're so different from Enron," said Calpine's Cartwright. "We're poles apart."

In speech after speech, many laced with oil patch twangs and drawls, energy and utility executives pointed to "balance sheet strengthening programs" and "asset based strategies."

They trumpeted "discipline," promised "more disclosure" and hailed "Economics 101" while trying to win back money managers who have fled energy stocks since the collapse of Enron, once the nation's largest trader of electricity and natural gas.

ENRON STILL THE STAR

El Paso's stock last year was down more than 37 per cent, Calpine's plummeted 62 per cent and Williams Cos Inc dropped 36 per cent. Dynegy, which called off its acquisition of Enron last fall, lost more than 50 per cent of its value.

"The only good thing to come out of the Enron situation is that people know who we are," Dynegy's Bergstrom joked during a speech that mentioned the bankrupt competitor's name more than a dozen times.

Although Enron didn't participate in the conference, it still stole the show. Small crowds of investors sipping coffee or bottled water collected periodically outside the ballroom to watch the Enron hearings on a large screen television. Its collapse was the talk of a banquet lunch over filet mignon.

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