John Sherriff

John Sherriff served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Enron Europe, one of the company’s largest and most profitable international divisions, based in London. Under his leadership, Enron Europe traded European, Australian, and Japanese electricity, European natural gas, and worldwide oil, credit, and metals markets, making it one of the largest commodity trading organizations in the world. Sherriff was promoted from President and COO to President and CEO of Enron Europe in May 2000 and was named to the Enron Management Committee in August 2001. He worked closely with Louise Kitchen on the development and European rollout of EnronOnline, the company’s electronic trading platform.

Sherriff does not have a preserved PST mailbox in the Enron email corpus, but he appears in 5,399 emails across 301 unique senders’ mailboxes. These references, preserved primarily in the correspondence of colleagues such as Kitchen, Greg Whalley, and Mark Frevert, document his leadership of European operations from 1999 through the company’s collapse in late 2001.

Career at Enron

Early Years and US Gas Trading (1994-1996)

Sherriff joined Enron in 1994 and initially managed natural gas trading in the western United States. This role placed him in the company’s core commodity trading business during a period of rapid expansion in deregulated energy markets. His experience on the US gas trading desk provided the foundation for his subsequent move to lead Enron’s European operations.

Move to London and European Leadership

By the late 1990s, Sherriff had relocated to London to take charge of Enron’s growing European business. By early 1999, he was serving as President and COO of Enron Europe, overseeing the division’s expansion across the continent. An email from Martina Angelova dated March 31, 2000, regarding a UK inflation presentation, identifies him in this role.

This correspondence illustrates Sherriff’s direct involvement in the financial modeling that underpinned European trading positions, particularly his urgency around quarter-end mark-to-market valuations.

Promotion to CEO (May 2000)

On May 5, 2000, the Office of the Chairman issued a company-wide announcement promoting Sherriff to President and CEO of Enron Europe. The reorganization was part of a broader leadership shuffle prompted by the growth of EnronOnline and the increasing coordination requirements between North American and European operations. The announcement read:

As part of the same announcement, Cliff Baxter moved to Enron Corp. as Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, and Mark Frevert became Chairman and CEO of North America while remaining Chairman of Enron Europe. Sherriff’s promotion gave him day-to-day executive authority over the European division, reporting to Frevert as Chairman.

Enron Europe Operations

Scope and Markets

Enron Europe under Sherriff’s leadership was responsible for a broad portfolio of commodity markets spanning three continents. According to Enron’s corporate biography, Sherriff was “responsible for Enron’s activities across Europe, Japan and Australia.” The division traded European and Australian electricity, European natural gas, and worldwide oil, credit, and metals markets. This geographic and product breadth made Enron Europe one of the largest commodity trading organizations in the world during its peak years.

EnronOnline Development

Sherriff supported the creation and European deployment of EnronOnline, the electronic trading platform conceived and led by Louise Kitchen. As early as May 1999, Kitchen was sending project updates directly to Sherriff, Whalley, and Philippe Bibi regarding contractor selection and an 18th September delivery target for the platform. Sherriff’s position as the senior executive in London made him a natural partner in ensuring the platform’s success across European markets.

In January 2000, Sherriff and Kitchen jointly received a legal due diligence memo from Paul Simons regarding the launch of credit derivatives trading on EnronOnline in Europe. The memo, titled “Credit Trading OnLine - Results of Legal Due Diligence and Risk Memo,” proposed a launch date of January 24, 2000, indicating that Sherriff was directly involved in approving new product offerings on the platform for European markets.

Capital and Funding Strategy

Sherriff was actively involved in managing the financial structure of European operations. In an April 2, 2001 email, he described his approach to reducing capital costs.

This message suggests Sherriff sought alternatives to the structured finance arrangements that characterized much of Enron’s corporate funding, favoring trading-based approaches to generate cash flow for European operations.

Turbine Sales

Sherriff also managed the disposition of physical assets for the European division. In March 2001, Kitchen referred Ben Jacoby to Sherriff regarding the sale of 9FA gas turbines that Enron Europe Ltd. (EEL) was selling: “EEL is now selling its 9FAs (previously mentioned for Arcos), I referred John Sherriff to you to see if you have any potential outlets for these turbines.” This illustrates the breadth of Sherriff’s responsibilities, extending beyond trading into asset management.

Leadership Style

Open Floor Plan

Sherriff was noted for his approach to office design and executive accessibility. According to Risk.net, “As John Sherriff moved up from his trading role and left the Houston office to become chief executive of Enron Europe, he instituted an open floor plan outside the trading organization as well and decided to sit out on the trading floor rather than in an office.” This decision to forgo a private office and sit among the traders reflected a hands-on management philosophy.

Cost Management

Sherriff demonstrated a strong focus on managing expenses, particularly the costs associated with transatlantic coordination between London and Houston. In a July 9, 2001 memo to the Executive Committee, he wrote.

Sherriff asked his fellow executives to “remind your managers to consider the travel time and costs (both direct and indirect) when inviting international employees to off-site meetings in the US.” The memo also noted the particular difficulty of off-sites scheduled at quarter-end, which “compounds the difficulty; worse still are the times they occur at the end of Q2, since it also coincides and conflicts with the PRC process.” This correspondence reveals both his cost-consciousness and his awareness of the career pressures facing London-based employees in a Houston-centric corporate culture.

Position in Enron Hierarchy

Reporting Structure

Sherriff reported to Mark Frevert, who served as Chairman of Enron Europe while simultaneously holding broader corporate responsibilities. Department of Justice exhibits dated July 31, 2000 confirm Sherriff’s placement in organizational charts showing the leadership structure of Enron Europe Ltd. alongside Frevert in the Office of the Chairman structure.

Management Committee (2001)

On August 21, 2001, following Jeff Skilling’s resignation as CEO, Ken Lay reorganized Enron’s senior leadership. Sherriff was named to the newly formed Enron Management Committee alongside Lay, Frevert, Kitchen, John Lavorato, and other senior executives. This appointment formalized his standing as one of the company’s top decision-makers during the critical final months of Enron’s existence.

Coordination with Houston

Sherriff’s correspondence shows him interacting regularly with Houston-based executives across multiple functions. He handled expatriate tax and compliance issues, coordinating with PricewaterhouseCoopers on tax returns for European-based staff. Kitchen noted in a March 2001 email that Sherriff was “now spooked because he doesn’t even check his tax return – he just signs them,” suggesting a level of trust in professional advisors that the PWC issues had disrupted. He was also listed in September 2001 budget review meeting schedules for Enron Europe.

Key Correspondents

Because Sherriff lacks a personal mailbox in the corpus, his communication network must be reconstructed from references in others’ correspondence. His mentions span 301 unique senders, indicating broad engagement across the organization.

The concentration of references in the mailboxes of Kitchen, Whalley, and Frevert reflects Sherriff’s position at the intersection of European operations, the EnronOnline platform, and corporate leadership.

Career Timeline

Post-Enron Career

After Enron’s collapse, Sherriff transitioned to a career in litigation finance. For over a decade, he ran Lake Tahoe Financial, a business that invested in commercial lawsuits by purchasing a share of plaintiffs’ potential litigation proceeds. As Risk.net reported in 2011, “For the last 10 years, his business has been investing in commercial lawsuits with Lake Tahoe Financial, in which he buys a share of the plaintiff’s potential proceeds in their litigation.”

Sherriff also authored a book titled Lucky and Good: Risk, Decisions & Bets for Investors, Traders & Entrepreneurs, in which he shared insights about what went right and wrong at Enron, his litigation investment business, and perspectives drawn from poker and sports. The book reflected his continued engagement with the themes of risk assessment and decision-making that had characterized his trading career.

Legal Status

John Sherriff was not criminally charged, indicted, or named in any Department of Justice or Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement actions related to the Enron scandal. No evidence of congressional testimony or subpoenas involving Sherriff was found in searches of federal records. While he appears in DOJ exhibits in his capacity as a senior executive during the period under investigation, he was not a target of prosecution.

This absence from legal proceedings distinguishes Sherriff from several of his peers in Enron’s senior leadership. The European trading operations he oversaw were not at the center of the fraud allegations, which focused primarily on the structured finance transactions and accounting practices associated with Andrew Fastow’s special purpose entities and domestic operations.

See Also

• Louise Kitchen – President and CEO of Enron Net Works, key partner on EnronOnline and European operations
• Mark Frevert – Chairman of Enron Europe and Sherriff’s direct superior
• Greg Whalley – President and COO of Enron Wholesale Services
• Cliff Baxter – Vice Chairman whose move to corporate strategy officer coincided with Sherriff’s promotion
• John Lavorato – President of Enron Americas, peer on the Management Committee

References

Research for this article is based on 5,399 email mentions across 301 unique senders in the Enron email corpus, covering the period from 1999 through late 2001. John Sherriff does not have a personal PST file in the FERC release; all primary source evidence comes from references in other executives’ correspondence, including corporate announcements, legal memos, and internal communications.

Secondary sources include the archived Enron corporate website (enroncorp.com), Department of Justice Enron case exhibits, Risk.net’s 2011 retrospective on Enron’s legacy, and Sherriff’s own book Lucky and Good (Amazon). Full research documentation is available in the researcher file.