Christopher Huff

Can confirm this story. As head trader at Enron when it filed for bankruptcy, I received many calls from firms that were recruiting. I was busy trying to close out the trading book and wanted to take some time to decide my future so didn’t take any meetings. But Citadel was by far the most aggressive. Other companies set up a few interviews with Enron’s senior people. Citadel interviewed seemingly everyone in the trading operation, all functions at all levels. Citadel's team called me twice but I declined to meet. It was apparent to me that their intent was to reverse engineer the business and I wasn’t going to help them. They knew that people looking for a job, particularly if they didn’t have a fiduciary responsibility to a current employer, would be very free with info. Interview everyone and you get a 360 perspective of the industry, how the business makes money, its competitive edge, who the best employees are, etc. Citadel probably interviewed several hundred Enron employees. In the end, they maybe hired 5. Much more importantly, they built the framework for how to enter the energy business, which, as Ken notes below, has been an enormous success. I did eventually talk with Citadel. On their third call to me, they asked if I would talk with Ken directly. I was at the airport heading to Aspen for a quick industry event. I didn’t know Ken personally but had great respect for what he’d built and so told his rep he could call me when I got back to Houston the following week. She said great, but called back a few minutes later with a question: if Ken flew to Aspen to meet me in person the next day, would I? Out of respect, I said of course. The next day I had a great meeting with him and later that week he offered me a job as head gas trader. I wanted to fully run an operation and thought there was more upside if I could have my own fund so I declined. I ended up building my own firm starting with traders and hiring deep fundamentals expertise. Citadel started with the research (as is their DNA) and built up a trading operation around it. Both models worked fabulously well. I came away from the experience with an even deeper respect for both Ken and Citadel and remain friends with him to this day. I started with a niche, gas trading, built a niche fund and burnt out after 17 years. Ken started with a niche, convert arb, and built one of the most successful financial firms ever and has never tired. blurb below via @ByrneHobart