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LCG Publishes 2024 Annual Outlook for Texas Electricity Market (ERCOT)

LCG, October 10, 2023 – LCG Consulting (LCG) has released its annual outlook of the ERCOT wholesale electricity market for 2024, based on the most likely weather, market, transmission, and generator conditions.

Read more

LCG Publishes 2024 Annual Outlook for Texas Electricity Market (ERCOT)

LCG, October 10, 2023 – LCG Consulting (LCG) has released its annual outlook of the ERCOT wholesale electricity market for 2024, based on the most likely weather, market, transmission, and generator conditions.

Read more

Industry News

Federal Enron Probes to Dig Deeply

LCG, Dec. 6, 2001--Investigations by the U.S. Congress and federal government into collapse of Enron Corp. will go well beyond a simple probing of the company's abrupt downfall and dig into accounting and marketing practices as well as personnel policies.

The powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee was set to meet with Enron in Houston today as part of its investigation which Rep. W. J. "Billy" Tauzin said would be "very aggressive." The committee plans to begin hearings in January.

"Too many people were hurt by this," Tauzin said. He added that he wanted to get to the bottom of how Enron manipulated accounting procedures and would also examine the impact of the company's failure on energy markets.

The committee staff has already met with officials of accounting firm Arthur Andersen, Enron's auditors, as part of an inquiry into the energy company's accounting practices. The meeting "reconfirms our suspicion that this is a very complicated issue that will take months for our investigators to untangle," said committee spokesman Ken Johnson.

The committee staff also met with the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets U.S. standards for corporate bookkeeping, but Johnson had no light to shed on that meeting.

Officials from Arthur Andersen have so far declined comment but the "Big Five" accountancy firms issued a joint statement yesterday that responded to growing criticism over the quality and objectivity of Andersen's audits and promised to react to the implications of the Enron collapse.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee isn't alone in its curiosity about Enron's record-keeping. The House Financial Services Committee plans to hold a hearing on Enron's financial practices next Wednesday. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt, Enron Chief Executive Ken Lay and top officials of Arthur Andersen are expected to testify.

Did Enron Prohibit Employees from Selling 401(k) Stock?

The U.S. Department of Labor will conduct its own investigation of Enron to determine whether thousands of its laid off workers were treated unfairly, especially with regard to their 401(k) retirement programs.

"Enron's employees have gotten the short end of the stick in the sudden collapse of this company and we are committed to doing everything we can to help them," Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said yesterday.

Among the things Chao wants to find out is why Enron, prior to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last Sunday, had prohibited its workers for several weeks from selling stock held in voluntary retirement plans while the value of the stock continued its downward spiral.

The Labor Department said in a statement that many Enron employees lost 70 percent to 90 percent of their retirement assets after the company said it would restate its earnings. The department said it is reviewing Enron's employee benefits plans, the rules governing them and steps the company took shortly before its collapse to prohibit employees from making transactions with their 401(k) plan assets.

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