Beware of Headquarters Relocations... You won't believe this. But a corporate relocation study triggered by the acquisition in 1985 of Ken Lay's Houston Natural Gas by Inter/North, headquartered in Omaha, introduced Lay to Jeff Skilling, who hired Andy Fastow, who took down Enron.

That's a one-sentence summary of Kurt Eichenwald's massive 700-page account of Enron's rise and fall, Conspiracy of Fools. Skilling, at the time a thirty-one year old "rising star" in McKinsey & Company's Houston office, recommended Houston over Omaha.

But at the critical presentation of the relocation study to the HNG/InterNorth board, an enraged majority blasted the report. Skilling even thought one member might suffer a heart attack.

"'Okay,' Skilling said, holding up his hands, 'Listen, I'm just a consultant. I'm just giving my advice.'" (p. 30) Instead, the board voted to maintain two headquarters. But Ken Lay was impressed with the young analyst.

Within two years, Lay had maneuvered a new board into moving the headquarters to Houston. And the rest, as they say, is history. Skilling later joined the company, now known as Enron, and eventually became CEO. Along the way, Skilling hired Fastow, promoting him to CEO in 1998.

"With that [promotion], the top financial job at one of the nation's largest companies was in the hands of a criminal," Eichenwald writes (p. 176). But the larger story of Enron is one of almost unimaginable incompetence and greed. That's what allowed criminal acts to remain undetected for so many years.

So as I finished the book, I smiled and asked myself the question, What if a different firm had handled the corporate relocation study? Would the course of American financial history have been different? Do you have a personal Enron story?

Corrections... The last Dispatch incorrectly identified the steel mill in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania. It's a former U.S Steel plant, not Bethlehem Steel, and Gerard McHugh leads the sales team.

--Peter Pike