Enron Corp. - University of California | Office of The President

These transactions included Marlin, Firefly, Mariner, Osprey, Whitewing, and the infamous Raptors.
With CS First Boston's help, Enron sold assets to these entities at inflated prices – prices that Enron
never could have obtained in arm's-length transactions with third parties, resulting in phony profits
while hiding billions of dollars of debt.
708. Nath and CS First Boston worked very closely with Vinson & Elkins and Andersen
to create and document these entities and these transactions. According to a former Enron employee,
"Monetise" was the buzzword. Everyone was always saying: "'We have to monetise this.'" The
quick-fix solution was: "'We'll sell it to LJM, or to Raptor, or to whatever the partnership of the
month was .... They'd pick up the phone and Larry Nath would come down to Houston for a week
or two and sit down with the ... accountants and come up with something.'" Nath would gather
with a group from Enron's treasury and global finance departments known inside the Company as
"'Fastow's field marshals.'" This group included McMahon, Enron's former treasurer, and Glisan,
who took over from McMahon as treasurer.
709. Most of the vehicles that emerged from these meetings contained an unusual feature
created by Nath: they held Enron stock in order to comfort lenders and secure an investment grade
rating, but required Enron to inject more shares into the vehicles if the share price fell to certain
"trigger points" or prices i.e., $83-$19 per share. They could also force their liquidation if Enron's
credit rating was downgraded and the debt of the SPEs became recourse to Enron in such
circumstances. "'What I can't believe is that anyone ever got comfortable when you put all of this
stuff together. Taken in combination, these partnerships clearly posed a material risk for the
company,'" a knowledgeable banker has said. The trigger points inside the partnerships were a
time bomb. "'There's no question that senior people at CFSB knew what was going on and that
it was a house of cards,'" one Enron insider has said. The triggers were discussed by senior
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