Enron Corp

Enron Corp.'s current and former workers will get $133.9 million in cash as part of their retirement benefits under a settlement announced Thursday between the company and the U.S. Department of Labor. The agreement resolves lawsuits against Enron and its board by former and current workers over the energy trader's 2001 collapse. It also ends a class-action suit brought by Enron's retirees, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said Thursday in a statement.

A year after giving federal investigators a road map of financial scheming that fueled Enron Corp.'s failure, the main author of the so-called Powers Report says he still doesn't understand why anyone at the company thought the schemes would work. "This is a cultural issue as much as an accounting issue," said William Powers Jr., the University of Texas law school dean who investigated the company's demise. "This is a matter of corporate character and virtue."

The first of three retrials stemming from last year's three-month trial of five former Enron Corp. broadband executives that ended with a hung jury is slated to begin Tuesday next door to the continuing fraud and conspiracy case of company founder Kenneth L. Lay and former Chief Executive Jeffrey K. Skilling.

Enron Corp. cut 200 more headquarters jobs Friday, mostly in the energy-trading business the company has been trying to keep alive since filing the biggest bankruptcy case in history. The cuts--involving traders, support staff and others at Enron North America--will take effect Dec. 15, spokesman Johan Zaayman said. Enron fired 4,300 at its Houston headquarters Monday, a day after its Chapter 11 filing, and 1,100 in Britain a week ago. Enron's bankers, led by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Enron Corp. bonds and shares fell after the largest energy trader tapped a $3-billion credit line because it has been shut out of the leading market for low-interest, short-term loans. The company's stock has fallen 54% in the last 14 days after investors questioned its transactions with affiliates run by Enron's former chief financial officer. The shares fell 95 cents, or 5.8%, to $15.40 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman on Monday asked J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. to explain its role in a series of loans to Enron Corp. partnerships that may have helped keep debt off the energy trader's books. Waxman, a Los Angeles Democrat, asked J.P. Morgan to provide details about loans between an Enron unit called Sequoia Financial Assets and several Enron partnerships. Waxman is concerned that the transactions allowed Sequoia to avoid recording debt. Waxman is asking whether J.P.

Enron Corp. may have overstated the value of its assets and financial contracts by as much as $24 billion late last year, the company said in a regulatory filing Monday. At least part of the overstatement relates to transactions Enron made with a network of private partnerships that hid debt and assets from shareholders by keeping them off the company's books. Enron said its earlier financial results, which it restated Nov. 19, aren't reliable.

Two of Enron Corp.'s creditors asked a judge to strip the company's top management of power by ordering an independent trustee to run the energy trader as it reorganizes under the largest-ever Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The Regents of the University of California and the Absolute Recovery Hedge Fund said in court papers filed late Friday that Enron's "management has inherent conflicts of interest" that are detrimental to the Houston-based company. They asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur J.

The San Francisco Giants asked a federal bankruptcy judge to force Enron Corp. to remove a scoreboard sign featuring the fallen energy company's tilted "E" logo from the baseball team's Pacific Bell Park. San Francisco Baseball Associates and its affiliate China Basin Ballpark Co., owners of the major league baseball team and its stadium, said that "Enron's negative reputation alone" gave the franchise the right to cancel the 1998 sponsorship deal.

Wall Street firm CS First Boston, a unit of Swiss bank Credit Suisse Group Inc., said Friday that two of its bankers were directors of one of the complex off-balance-sheet vehicles energy trader Enron Corp. used before its collapse. Enron allegedly used thousands of these intricate, special-purpose vehicles to shift debt off its balance sheet, mask growing losses and artificially inflate profits. The energy trader filed for bankruptcy protection in December.