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Insurers Fault Enron Deals at Morgan
By RIVA D. ATLAS
In 1996, the Sumitomo Corporation (news/quote) of Japan discovered that a copper trader named Yasuo Hamanaka had lost $2.6 billion over the prior decade. The company eventually sued J. P. Morgan as well as Chase Manhattan (news/quote), charging that both banks, which have since merged, engineered loans disguised as trades that allowed Mr. Hamanaka to conceal his losses.
Now, several insurance companies, in legal filings tied to a court hearing on Wednesday, accuse the company, today known as J. P. Morgan Chase (news/quote), of having used similar tactics to help Enron (news/quote). As the insurers describe it, the bank's transactions allowed Enron to disguise debts.
J. P. Morgan has sued a total of 11 insurers for refusing to honor its $1 billion in claims relating to its dealings with Enron, which filed for bankruptcy.
Arguing against the bank in both cases is Alan Levine, a lawyer at Kronish, Lieb, Weiner & Hellman in New York, who hopes to strengthen the Enron case by arguing that there has been a pattern at J. P. Morgan Chase.
"The conclusion that Chase deliberately camouflaged a loan to Enron as a commodity transaction in order to perpetuate a fraud" on the insurance companies, Mr. Levine says in a court filing, "is buttressed by Chase transactions with other firms." Describing a transaction as a trade instead of a loan could make a company's debts look smaller than they really are.
J. P. Morgan maintains that there is nothing unusual, much less fraudulent, about the sorts of transactions involved in these cases.
A spokesman for J. P. Morgan, Joseph Evangelisti, said the Enron and Sumitomo cases are unrelated. "These cases are not analogous in any way, and will be decided on their own merits," he said. "The only link between the suits is they share the same lead counsel. "
Besides representing three of the insurance companies in the Enron case, Mr. Levine also represents Sumitomo in a lawsuit it filed in 1999 against Chase Manhattan, but not in a suit Sumitomo filed around the same time against J. P. Morgan. Both suits are still pending.
In the Enron case, J. P. Morgan has asked a Federal District Court judge in New York to issue an immediate ruling when he holds a hearing on Wednesday, avoiding evidence gathering and a trial.
Both cases may hinge on whether J. P. Morgan fully disclosed the nature of the trades, involving contracts known as derivatives. Derivatives promise payments from one party to another, with the value derived from changes in the price of an underlying security, index or commodity.
J. P. Morgan is one of the world's largest traders of derivatives; they accounted for an estimated 15 to 20 percent of its earnings last year, according to Ruchi Madan, an analyst at Salomon Smith Barney.
The trades with Enron were made by companies affiliated with J. P. Morgan, known as Mahonia Limited and Mahonia Natural Gas Limited. The transactions became public shortly after Enron's bankruptcy filing in December, when J. P. Morgan sued the insurance companies to collect more than $1 billion it says it is owed by Enron.
The insurance companies had provided a form of guarantee, known as surety bonds, in the event that Enron did not make good on its obligations.
In refusing to pay, the insurers argue that they were misled as to the true nature of the transactions between Enron and the bank. In these transactions, J. P. Morgan paid Enron up front in return for deliveries of oil and gas over several years.
The legal arguments Mr. Levine has made in the Sumitomo and Enron cases include similar descriptions of J. P. Morgan's derivatives transactions.
In the Sumitomo case, Mr. Levine wrote that Chase disguised its loans as "copper swaps," or agreements involving the actual purchase of the commodity and exposure to its fluctuating price. "In reality, these `copper swaps' were completely unrelated to copper," Mr. Levine argued. "They were neither physical copper transactions, nor financial transactions whose value was dependent on copper prices. They were loans, pure and simple."
In the Enron case, Mr. Levine again argues that the transactions were unrelated to the transfer of commodities ・in this case, oil and gas.
"The parties appear to have arranged a series of paper transfers of gas and oil from Enron to Mahonia, from Mahonia to Chase, and from Chase or a Chase affiliate back to Enron," he said.
In a court filing by J. P. Morgan on Friday, the bank does not dispute Mr. Levine's characterization of the trades between Enron and the J. P. Morgan affiliates as loans.
"Any prepaid commodity sale contract provides financing," the bank says. "There is nothing inappropriate about structuring transactions to satisfy the parties' financial, tax, regulatory or accounting objectives within the relevant rules and standards."
Investor concerns over J. P. Morgan's conflict with the insurers have contributed to a sharp decline in value of its shares since Enron's December bankruptcy filing. The bank's stock fell to a 52-week low of $26.70 during the day on Friday, on a report in the Wall Street Journal that the Federal Reserve was examining the Enron trades. The stock recovered to end the day at $28.19 a share, down nearly 23 percent for the year.
The Federal Reserve's examination does not appear to be part of a formal investigation of the bank, according to both J. P. Morgan and the Fed. "It's normal for the Federal Reserve in its role as a bank regulator to look into high-profile transactions," said Mr. Evangelisti, who declined to comment directly on the matter.
A Fed spokeswoman, Michelle Smith, also declined to comment specifically. "As you know, we cannot comment at all on supervisory matters involving individual institutions," she said on Friday. "But, as part of our normal banking supervisory role, we need to understand what is happening at the institutions we supervise."
Still, J. P. Morgan conceded in its court filing Friday that negative publicity from the Mahonia suit has had an impact. "Already," the bank said, the insurers allegations of fraud and their refusal to pay, "have caused significant reputational risk to J. P. Morgan Chase."
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