|
|
Enron Mail |
We need some advice on this one - we are not in any negotiation with Altra
now and anything we were talking about is under a Confidentiality. Andy needs some advice on how to pursue - obviously it helps them to say the haven't been left out of the loop. Andy will fill more in. ---------------------- Forwarded by Louise Kitchen/HOU/ECT on 04/08/2000 08:36 --------------------------- From: Rahil Jafry on 04/08/2000 08:32 To: Louise Kitchen/HOU/ECT@ECT, Andy Zipper/Corp/Enron@Enron, David.Forster@enron.com, Dave Samuels/HOU/ECT@ECT cc: Subject: Enron moves make waves in electronic trading industry.(Brief ... Once again, Altra is clueless.... Enron moves make waves in electronic trading industry.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included) Monica Perin 07/21/2000 Houston Business Journal 11 Copyright 2000 Information Access Company. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT 2000 American City Business Journals, Inc. Leading online platform signs agreements with HoustonStreet Exchange and True Quote EnronOnline, Enron Corp.'s giant online platform,, has made the first Commodity in what may become a consolidation of competing electronic trading exchanges in the energy industry. Enron Net Works, the division which operates EnronOnline, last week signed cooperative agreements with HoustonStreet Exchange and True quote LLC. And industry sources confirm that EnronOnline is negotiating similar deals with several other exchanges, including Houston-based Altra Energy Technologies and RedMeteor, as well as e-Speed, an exchange backed by Dynegy and, Williams. HoustonStreet Exchange, headquartered in Portsmouth, N.H., was recently ranked among the top 20 dependent energy exchanges by AMR Research, a Boston consulting firm which put Altra in first place. True Quote, based in Louisville, Ky., a startup trading platform being developed by APB Energy -- an over-the-counter brokerage firm -- along with PG&E National Energy Group, EnForm Technology and Microsoft Corp. EnronOnline is the world largest commodity trading platform, but users an only trade with Enron. Rather than being a true trading exchange, industry insiders describe it as simply an online extension of Enron's business. But in EnronOnline's first six months of operation after being launched last November, the value of transactions conducted on the, system surpassed $50 billion at a rate of $1.5 billion a day. The platform offers trading in a wide variety of commodities, from most forms of energy to bandwidth and paper MORE EYEBALLS The agreements EnronOnline has struck will enable the company to post the prices at which it will buy or sell natural gas and electricity on HousonStreet.com and TrueQuote.com Neither HoustonStreet nor TrueQuote prices, however, will appear on EnronOnline. Customers on those two sites who click on an Enron quote will be instantly linked to EnronOnline, where the trades will take place. "As Louise (Kitchen, president of EnronOnline) said, extending their pricing to more eyeballs will build more transaction volume for Enron," says Paul Bourke, president of Altra. "The question is whether it will build volume for the other exchanges. "We are talking to Enron," Bourke adds. "We are intrigued, and we are attempting understand what the business benefits to Altra would be." He says an Enron-Altra deal would be "more complicated" than those involving other exchanges because of Altra's significant liquidity in natural gas. Altra is the leader in online natural gas trading. While none of the exchanges would reveal what, if any, financial terms are involved in the agreements--other than to say there is no sharing of commissions --Bourke says he expects that if Altra and Enron finalize an agreement, Enron would take a small equity position in Altra. He speculates that this is what Enron did with HoustonStreet. Brian Pieri, vice president of Red Meteor, says the value of EnronOnline to the other exchanges is that "they bring' tight-bid offers, which is something the exchanges have to work hard on. And more people will make the bid offers even tighter." This means buy and sell prices are close together, which helps market liquidity. Asked if the additional liquidity and trading volume that Enron might bring to the other exchanges wouldn't just further fragment the market, Pieri compared the whole online trading scene to a sixth-grade dance. "The boys are all on one side of the room and the girls are on the other side, and nobody is dancing. Somebody has to start and then everybody else joins in. Enron brings more validity to this very new situation," Pied says. "All of the exchanges are trying to build liquidity, of which Enron is the king," says Bill Swanton, an analyst with AMR Research. Swanton predicts that the energy exchanges will consolidate within the next six to eight months, and the ultimate surviving exchanges will not be owned by any single player. "You need an independent exchange. I can't imagine Enron will end up running it. The trading community won't be satisfied with that," he says. Swanton points out, however, that Enron "will attract attention they don't want if they force, some of these guys out of business." But HoustonStreet's CEO, Frank Getman, takes a different view of what the Enron deals mean. "Web-based energy trading exchanges are no longer about liquidity, thanks to these EnronOnline data deals," he says. "The game is now about functionality and value-added services." Folder Name: Rahil Jafry Relevance Score on Scale of 100: 97 ______________________________________________________________________ To review or revise your folder, visit http://www.djinteractive.com or contact Dow Jones Customer Service by e-mail at custom.news@bis.dowjones.com or by phone at 800-369-7466. (Outside the U.S. and Canada, call 609-452-1511 or contact your local sales representative.) ______________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
|