Editor dies in fall from New York Times office building

Associated Press | 8/22/2002

[tallhappy]

SteamshipTime: ___I remember seeing Enron ads on TV and reading articles like this.___

Interesting observation. Here is another article by Myerson.

(BTW, I am not implying anything with these posts).

The New York Times


View Related Topics


January 14, 1997, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section D; Page 6; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk

LENGTH: 922 words

HEADLINE: THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING;
Enron, seeking to be a household name, plans to start its campaign on Super Bowl Sunday.

BYLINE: By Allen R. Myerson

DATELINE: HOUSTON

BODY:
EVEN IF it is the nation's largest independent natural gas company and even if it does aim to dominate an electricity market that is larger than the nation's telecommunications market, the Enron Corporation has found that just telling people what it is can pose unexpected challenges.

Simply choosing an appropriate replacement for the name "Houston Natural Gas/Internorth" almost foundered in the mid-1980's when Kenneth L. Lay, the chief executive, learned days before the public rollout that the first choice, "Enteron," meant the digestive tract -- not exactly the image a natural gas company craved. Today, Enron plans to announce its first major advertising campaign to build its image, starting with television spots before and after Super Bowl XXXI on Jan. 26, in markets including New York, Washington and Houston. Two-page newspaper spreads will follow the next day, with advertisements in business magazines and on cable television as well.

The goals: to persuade Americans to demand faster deregulation of the electricity industry, teach them the Enron name and then win them over as customers.

To match the new image, Enron is striving to transform itself from a natural gas and electricity trader, transporter and wholesaler into a competitive electricity retailer as well, with a brand name as familiar as AT&T, MCI or Sprint.

"Enron is not a household name; we know that," Mr. Lay said at his office yesterday. "But we have a chance to create an AT&T for the electricity business."

Starting with a system that serves about 5,000 wholesale customers, Enron is installing enough telephones and billing systems to handle as many as six million retail customers, more than any electricity company has, the company said.

An initial advertising budget of $25 million to $30 million for about six months is likely to exceed $200 million annually -- roughly what a company like Sprint spends to court telephone customers -- in five years, as companies like Enron are allowed to compete for electricity customers in more states, the company said.

The advertisements feature customers around the nation and the world testifying that Enron has brought them cheaper, cleaner, more reliable energy. The television ads will explain how the company helped citizens in Peterborough, N.H., cut their electricity bills by 10 to 20 percent; allowed the Columbus, Ohio, school district to save millions, and enabled businesses and residents in the Philippines to avoid chronic, aggravating power failures.

"Nobody likes a monopoly, and particularly in a place where the state motto is 'Live Free or Die,' " one Peterborough customer says in the ad.

Then an announcer concludes, "You can choose your neighbors, and soon you may choose your energy company: Enron.".

To reach opinion leaders, Enron will run 30-second Super Bowl spots in New York and Washington as well as in a few other cities, including Houston, where Enron's employees are concentrated. The six print advertisements will be distributed in three more localities. When focus groups responded to these advertisements by asking how they could sign up, Enron added an "800" number. Operators will tell callers how they can switch to Enron or help lobby for speedier deregulation.

Several states, including Massachusetts and California, will begin to open their electricity markets to competition within about a year. New York lawmakers are likely to debate the matter this year. Enron, pressing Washington to mandate nationwide competition, predicts that the nation's $200 billion electricity market will be entirely open in about a decade.

Many utilities, however, are lobbying to delay deregulation, which they say would force them to swallow the costs of power plants that were built with regulators' encouragement.

Enron's approach would benefit Enron, not the public, said John M. Castagna, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute in Washington, which represents utility companies. "You can't act in a thoughtful, prudent manner if you're racing into a burning building, which may be what this particular company is doing," he said.

Analysts, though, applauded Enron's initiative. Given the brawl over deregulation, Curt N. Launer, an analyst at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, said, "it's critically important to do this now."

To carry out its offensive, Enron named Elizabeth Arendall Tilney, a former Ogilvy & Mather executive, as marketing chief a year ago. Her former company created the advertising and ran the campaign until Shell Oil, another client, complained of a possible conflict of interest.

On Jan. 1 the account went to Conquest, which made Enron the first client for its New York office. Conquest, based in Paris, is, like Ogilvy & Mather, a unit of the WPP Group, based in London.

The company also has a colorful new logo, featuring a tilted E. It was the last design by the late Paul Rand, who had also done logos for I.B.M., ABC and Westinghouse Electric.

Enron plans a Hollywood-style campaign debut at a hotel ballroom in Houston today. But besides fireworks, searchlights and celebrity impersonators, the company will demonstrate that it is not taking all this too, too seriously. In a five-minute film to be shown at the event, responses from people around the world who are asked to define an Enron range from a cosmetics company that nearly went bust to "something from 'Star Trek' -- a Klingon would use it as a weapon." Mr. Lay then plans to say that the company has its work cut out for it.

[tallhappy]

1995 puf piece on Lay by Myerson

The New York Times


February 12, 1995, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 4; Page 2; Column 1; Week in Review Desk

LENGTH: 775 words

HEADLINE: February 5-11;
A Natural-Gas Man Has a Certain Something

BYLINE: By ALLEN R. MYERSON

DATELINE: HOUSTON

BODY:
IN the energy world, the geeks are pushing out the sheiks. OPEC ministers, old-line oil executives and Texas wildcatters are no match for the balding economists, scientists and engineeers, dripping with graduate degrees, who run the natural gas companies.

While Saudi Arabia wallows in debt, companies nobody has ever heard of are building multibillion-dollar pipelines across mountain ranges, deserts and seas, and multibillion-dollar liquefaction plants to ship gas where even the pipelines can't go. As a result, owlish executives like Kenneth L. Lay, (Ph.D., economics), the chairman of Enron, are global diplomats. Pipelines across the Andes are tying together Latin American countries that had been chilly neighbors. Japan is balancing its exports to Southeast Asia with imports of liquefied natural gas. By next summer, a pipeline under the Straits of Gibraltar will feed Spain and Portugal natural gas from Algeria by way of Morocco.

And where are many Middle Eastern nations turning for help in developing and marketing their own natural gas? To Israel. Jordan and Egypt have agreed to build natural-gas pipelines to Israel, and Qatar is trying to negotiate a shipping deal.

As Amos Ron, director general of Israel's Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, put it in an interview, "Such projects like natural gas pipelines are important stakes for the tent of peace, to hold it on the ground."

Dr. Lay's ambition is to match the global scope of the corporate oil titans, perhaps casting himself as the next Rockefeller. "Our vision is to provide the same kind of technical, marketing and financial skills to the natural gas business worldwide that the oil majors provided in the early part of this century," he said above the static from his jet's telephone.

For the natural gas geeks, the competition has a long head start.

Oil can be sent anywhere on anything. Natural gas fields must be tied to urban markets by costly pipelines and processing plants. Shipping natural gas requires liquefaction in plants as expensive as emirate palaces, although costs are falling.

Back in the 1970's, the United States lumped oil and natural gas together as petroleum products that electric utilities should shun. Having discovered since then that major natural gas producers like Kansas and Oklahoma don't even belong to OPEC, policy makers changed their minds. Natural gas, which burns far more cleanly than coal or oil, has become the Clinton Administration's favorite fuel.

Deregulation at home and improved techniques for finding and transporting natural gas globally have lowered prices. Whoever stuck much of the crude under a collection of religious zealots, medieval-style monarchs and petulant warlords, wisely spread natural gas more evenly around the world. And in 1993, the United States for the first time produced more natural gas, in dollar value, than oil.

Surging international demand for electricity, especially in developing nations, has prompted companies like Enron to create their own markets by building gas-fired power plants. Israel plans to generate half its electricity from natural gas in a decade, up from nothing now.

But natural gas still lacks popular appeal. The geeks may have billions of dollars and much of the world's energy supply at their disposal, but they are not as flashy as the wildcatters or as easy to vilify as Arab despots. Hollywood gave us James Dean as Jett Rink in the film "Giant," but Johnny Depp will never play Ken Lay. For the natural gas companies, it seems that the only bursts of publicity come when the pipelines burst, as in Edison, N.J., last year.

Natural-gas company bosses love to chat about complex engineering and byzantine finance. Michael E. J. Phelps, chief executive of Westcoast Energy, says his wife never forgave his decision to quit criminal law for the natural gas business. "I used to come home and talk about murder, rape, robbery and sodomy," he told his colleagues at a Cambridge Energy Research Associates conference last week. "But demand commodity toll design doesn't make for the same dinner table conversation."

Besides which, natural gas smells funny. (Not our fault, say the natural gas guys. The scent is added for safety).

What to do? Learn how the computer nerds recast themselves as business geniuses able to put their products on every desktop and kitchen table. Maybe sign them up as partners. "In the future," says Oliver G. Richard 3d, chief executive of New Jersey Natural Gas's parent company, "you will probably find someone from Bill Gates's group at Microsoft trying to sell you natural gas in your home."

[aristeides]

So Myerson's been covering Enron for over 7 years? That's a long time.

First time I've seen Ken Lay called "Dr. Lay," by the way. Highly unusual for Ph.D.'s to use the title.

[SEGUET]

"Because some people like acting like a dumba$$ to get attention."

Thank you

[Kaslin]

Actually, I have begun to think about his wife and children. If this is seen as a suicide, then they might not be eligible for life insurance benefits, so that might be a reason to say it wasn't a suicide.........

Unless he was married before it states here that they had no children

Myerson is survived by his wife, Carol Cropper Myerson, who works at BusinessWeek. They had no children.

[Undivided Heart]

His body landed on the roof of a nearby garage.

This line sounds odd assuming that "body" means dead body. It could be interpreted that he was dead before the fall. Or did he die during the fall by some other means, and thereafter his "body" landed on a garage.

[robertpaulsen]

He looks a little like this (now):

[Tacis]

To me, this is an obvious Arkancide; the dude's been fostered. He knows Enron. He has discovered all sorts of proof linking Willie, Hillie, Notsobright, McAuliffe, Rubin and several other leftists to the Enron criminal activities. He goes to his bosses at the Times and they forbid him to say anything about their guys. He protests, citing freedom of the press and the peoiple's right to know. They order him to turn in his notes, tapes, and files for "editorial review." He refuses and threatens to go up the journalistic food chain to the National Enquirer. The editors call Wille; Willie calls a couple of former Arkansas state troopers and some homies from around his office and, viola, we got a flying reporter/editor. Same as Foster. We'll never see the notes/records he had accumulated. The disgusting part will be all the pious words that will come from all the media sewers about "losing on of the great ones."

[js1138]

The report could just as easily, and more accurately have stated, "His body was found..."

[summer]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting. Newspapers don't always report "suicides." Frankly, I am not convinced it is so easy to simply "fall" out of a window in the NYT building on W 43rd St.

[roses of sharon]

Funny.

Really, I want to see if it is the same guy I saw on Charlie Rose show a month ago. This guy wrote for the NYT on Enron.

[MadIvan]

As this happened at the New York Times, does this get called "Clymercide"? ;)

ducking

Regards, Ivan

[tallhappy]

Myerson's most recent article on Enron and first since 1998



The New York Times


December 2, 2001, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 3; Page 1; Column 2; Money and Business/Financial Desk

LENGTH: 377 words

HEADLINE: With Enron's Fall, Many Dominoes Tremble

BYLINE: By ALLEN R. MYERSON

BODY:
THE Enron Corporation, despite its origins as a gas pipeline business, was no mere energy company. Its ambition, its passion for innovation and its boundless appetite for risk gave it a far greater reach than that of competitors, even those that control many more power plants or far larger reserves of natural gas.

In the last decade, it became not only the world's largest trader of electricity and natural gas, but also a telecommunications company, an investment firm, a paper and lumber producer and an insurer. It was, with more than $100 billion in revenue last year, the nation's seventh-largest company. Its collapse last week reverberated through not just the nation's energy industry, but also through retailing, real estate, insurance, banking, Internet services, newspaper publishing, even the manufacturing of plastics and glass.

Most other energy companies were content to provide electricity or natural gas. Enron signed contracts with 28,500 customers worldwide, including J. C. Penney and Owens-Illinois, to manage all their energy needs, usually promising that it would absorb the risks of volatile prices and fluctuating supplies itself. Now those customers fear that the risks are once again all their own.

Houston, where Enron keeps as high a profile as its 50-story downtown headquarters, is bearing the greatest burden. There, the Trammell Crow Company immediately cited Enron's collapse in halting the planned groundbreaking last month on a 34-story office, apartment and shopping complex next to Enron Field, the new home of the Houston Astros.

At the end of last week, those who did business with Enron, or depended on it in other ways, were still trying to puzzle through all the consequences of its ruin. No easy task, this, considering that Enron's own finances, more convoluted than anything even a Max Bialystock could imagine, proved beyond the grasp of its chief executive, Kenneth L. Lay.

Here, though, is an initial look at how Enron's fate has affected industries across the nation (not to even mention the 40 or so though, is an initial look at how Enron's fate has affected industries across the nation (not to even mention the 40 or so other countries where Enron operates).
ALLEN R. MYERSON

[aristeides]

Have we decided whether the Allen Myerson referred to in the other thread as being cripples as a result of a roofing accident is another guy? If it really is the same guy, a crippled man might have difficulty jumping out of a window.

[Landru]

"A longtime business editor at The New York Times fell to his death from the 11th floor of the newspaper's Times Square office building Thursday in what police called a possible suicide."

After having had to look at the books for so long, see first-hand what the Liberal-Socialists at the Gray Lady did to a once thriving organization??
~wham!~
He finally cracked.

The numbers never lie, fellas; &, beancounters know of "truths" you & I will never hear about.

...may God have mercy on his soul.

[AmericanInTokyo]

My, the moderator/administrator has been busy on this thread. Must have been a lot of quasi-humorous (and uncalled for) "Darwin Award" type cracks....

[aristeides]

The cracks were in pretty bad taste, but deleting them is a bit too 1984-ist for my liking.

[TC Rider]

The editors call Wille

I've always had the impression that Hillie was the goto person for this sort of thing.