Kate Symes

Kate Symes was a Deal Control specialist in Enron’s West Power Trading Division in Portland, Oregon, from August 2000 through May 2001. She managed the daily broker checkout process – reconciling Enron’s internal trade records against those of external brokers including Prebon West, Amerex West, APB, and Natsource – and coordinated the flow of Dow Jones electricity price index data for Western power hubs. She held direct database access to correct deal entries in Enron’s trading systems, making her a linchpin in the operational chain between Portland’s traders and Houston’s settlement operations.

Symes’ email archive in the Enron corpus contains 13,638 messages from 149 unique senders spanning August 30, 2000 to May 2, 2001. Corpus-wide term analysis shows she was the single highest-ownership person for over 20 operational terms related to broker checkout, deal verification, and trade corrections – a statistical confirmation that this function was her exclusive domain at the company.

Career at Enron

West Power Trading Desk

Symes worked within Tim Belden’s West Power Trading Division, the Portland-based operation that traded electricity across Western U.S. hubs including Mid-Columbia (Pacific Northwest), Palo Verde (Arizona), California-Oregon Border, and the California ISO zones NP-15 and SP-15. Her emails show she began receiving messages on August 30, 2000, with an initial onboarding period of just 4 emails that month and 10 in September before her volume ramped sharply to 274 in October and 1,262 in November.

Her operational chain ran through two primary supervisors. On the Houston side, Evelyn Metoyer led the Deal Clearing Settlements group and sent daily discrepancy reports that formed the backbone of Symes’ checkout workflow. On the Portland side, Bill Williams III managed the Real Time desk and handled the physical power flow operations that Symes’ deal control function supported. A December 20, 2000 organizational email from Belden described the Real Time desk’s responsibilities as “checking out with counterparties, handling cuts, and ensuring that all of our risk and settlement systems reflect the proper information” – a description that maps precisely to Symes’ daily work.

Responsibilities

Symes’ role encompassed three core functions:

Broker Checkout Operations. Each trading day, Symes reconciled Enron’s internal deal records against those maintained by four external brokers: Prebon West, Amerex West, APB, and Natsource. The “apb checkout” thread alone generated 387 emails in her archive, with Natsource checkout producing another 163. When discrepancies appeared, Symes tracked down the source – whether a misattributed counterparty, an incorrect delivery point, or a missing deal – and corrected the record directly in the trading system.

Dow Jones Price Index Coordination. Her second-highest correspondent was Ernest Onukogu at Dow Jones, with 1,789 messages exchanged. Symes managed the daily receipt and reconciliation of Dow Jones electricity price indices for every major Western hub. Conversation threads titled “DJ Mid-Columbia,” “DJ Palo Verde,” “DJ COB,” “DJ NP15,” and “DJ SP15” collectively account for hundreds of messages. These indices were essential for daily settlement calculations.

Trade Error Correction and Reporting. Symes held direct edit privileges in Enron’s trading databases, allowing her to modify deal records in real time. On November 17, 2000, she emailed colleagues to establish a formal error tracking protocol, writing: “Please let me know if this format is accessible and useful for you. I know some of these deal changes aren’t relevant to your calculation discrepancies, but I included everything just in case. If you’d like it pared down or beefed up, don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks for your patience.” The subject line – “Daily Error Report 11/17” – indicates she was building systematic reporting from scratch just weeks into the role.

Broker Checkout in Practice

The email corpus captures the texture of Symes’ daily work in granular detail. On November 14, 2000, she corrected a counterparty attribution error, writing: “I changed Deal #457993 to Pinnacle West Corp. and reminded Diana AGAIN of the name change.” The emphasis on “AGAIN” reflects the persistence required when traders or brokers repeatedly entered outdated entity names – in this case, Arizona Public Service instead of its parent company Pinnacle West Corp.

Three days later, on November 17, 2000, she handled a more complex correction involving multiple errors on a single deal. She wrote to confirmations specialist Kimberly Hundl: “Thanks for checking. I changed this deal to reflect off-peak hours only. Also, Tom Alonso just let me know that deal #460678 actually has a Mid-C delivery point, not Palo Verde. I changed this as well, but wanted to let you know so you can re-confirm.” The email shows her catching an hours specification error and proactively flagging a delivery point error she discovered through a separate channel – the kind of cross-referencing that prevented settlement mismatches downstream.

The last email in Symes’ archive, dated May 2, 2001, captures a moment of rare operational satisfaction. When Evelyn Metoyer reported that all brokers – Bloomberg, Prebon West, and Amerex West – had checked out with zero errors, Symes replied: “That’s the most beautiful e-mail I’ve ever read!”

California Energy Crisis Period

Symes’ eight months at the West Power desk coincided almost exactly with the peak of the California energy crisis. Rolling blackouts hit California in December 2000 and January 2001, and the state’s power markets experienced extreme price volatility through spring 2001. Her email volume tracks this arc with precision.

On December 15, 2000, Tim Belden and Chris Calger circulated a desk-wide notification that Symes received: “We have just received an order from the California Attorney General requiring all employees (except legal, admin, and human resources staff) to take the following steps immediately: 1. Save all e-mails, i.e., don’t delete any e-mails. 2. Do not delete any information in databases… This request is being made in connection with the California AG’s investigation into electricity prices.” The preservation order placed Symes’ routine operational emails under the same legal hold as the traders’ strategic communications.

Five days later, on December 20, 2000, Belden announced an organizational change: John Forney was departing the Portland Real Time desk for Houston, and Bill Williams III would assume responsibility for the Real Time desk, reporting to Greg Wolfe. This restructuring occurred as trading volumes were surging, with Symes’ monthly email count climbing from 1,568 in December to 2,093 in January and peaking at 3,001 in March 2001.

Email Activity

Symes’ email volume maps directly to the operational intensity of the California crisis. The 13,638 total messages across roughly eight months average approximately 56 emails per business day, though the distribution was heavily weighted toward the crisis peak.

The March 2001 peak of 3,001 emails represents roughly 140 emails per business day. The abrupt drop to 343 in May, with the last message sent at 5:37 PM on May 2, suggests either a departure, a role change, or a PST archive cutoff. A secondary source reference to an interview document titled “Kate Symes Interview” in Bill Williams’ HR files from April 2001 suggests she may have been transitioning to a Real Time desk position.

Key Correspondents

Symes’ correspondence network was narrow (149 unique senders) and heavily concentrated among operational support staff and the traders she directly served. The pattern reflects someone embedded in execution rather than strategy.

The concentration of Dow Jones messages at the top reflects the daily price index data flow. Metoyer and Thompson in Houston represent the settlement side; Richter, Williams, Mallory, Belden, and Platter represent the Portland trading floor. Symes sat between these two groups, translating each day’s trading activity into verified, reconciled records.

Legal Status

Kate Symes is not named in any Department of Justice or SEC enforcement actions related to Enron. Her email corpus shows no discussion of the trading strategies – later revealed through FERC proceedings and DOJ prosecutions – that the West Power desk employed to manipulate California electricity markets.

Several of her closest correspondents did face criminal charges. Tim Belden pleaded guilty in October 2002 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for manipulating California electricity markets. Jeffrey Richter pleaded guilty to the same charge. John Forney, who led the Real Time desk before his December 2000 departure to Houston, was indicted for market manipulation during the 1999-2001 period. Symes’ role appears to have been purely operational – deal entry verification, broker reconciliation, and price index management – rather than strategic or decision-making.

See Also

• Tim Belden – Vice President and Managing Director of West Power Trading
• Jeffrey Richter – West desk trader and frequent Symes correspondent
• Bill Williams III – Real Time desk lead who assumed responsibilities in December 2000
• John Forney – Former Real Time desk lead, departed Portland December 2000

References

This article draws on 13,638 emails in Kate Symes’ Enron corpus archive (PST file zl_symes-k_000.pst), spanning August 30, 2000 to May 2, 2001. Corpus analysis included 8 SQL queries against both the foundational database (corpus_metadata, tf_idf_index tables) and raw PST data, producing 7 verbatim quotes. Secondary sources include the DOJ Deputy Attorney General’s October 2002 news conference on Enron prosecutions and the Houston Chronicle Enron timeline.