Enron Zombies Attack!

They're back from the dead. There are lots of them. And they are everywhere.
This morning's Wall Street Journal follows up on the announcement that top Enron trader Jeff Shankman is launching an energy trading hedge fund by tracking down a host of Enron alumni. It turns out that the crooked E on your resume is not exactly a scarlet letter.

While most markets besides gas and power weren't big moneymakers for Enron, ex-traders today are piggybacking on the company's early investments in everything from pulp-and-paper products to coal trading. And they are finding their background a selling point, much as the collapse and bankruptcy of junk-bond pioneer Drexel Burnham Lambert launched dozens of careers elsewhere in the 1990s.
"Employers look at having worked at Enron as a risk-management experience, and they think people might have learned from the Enron mistake and those traders might have become better," says Michael Karp, chief executive of Options Group, an executive-search firm that works for many banks and hedge funds. The traders' renaissance comes as some Enron executives from other areas of the company have forfeited assets and begun serving prison terms. Even Enron trading veterans whose reputations were tarnished by criminal and civil probes are making inroads.

Trading on the Enron Mystique [Wall Street Journal]