Gladstone riffled through Smith's books: "Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes: Slaves of Passion"; "a layman's guide to the booming business of commodity trading"; "Kicking the Coffee Habit"; "Exotic Plants".
Shares of Enron, which is based in Houston, plunged $1.59, or 10.3percentto to $13.81, continuing the daily trading losses dating to Oct. 17, when Enron reported $1.01 billion in losses from investments outside its business of trading commodities like electricity and natural gas.
Days earlier the bank said it would leave the business of trading physical commodities altogether.American authorities brought criminal charges against SAC Capital, a hedge fund at the centre of an insider-trading probe.
DealBook » A Slimming Wall Street Giant | Morgan Stanley has been shrinking its business of trading bonds, commodities and other investments, leaving that to be dominated by its Wall Street rivals, Susanne Craig reported.
In the three years that Mr. Gorman, 54, has been at the helm, the bank has been progressively shrinking its business of trading bonds, commodities and other investments and expanding into wealth management.
If it succeeds, it will dominate the American market and, with Chile's Codelco and Australia's BHP, the world market as well.There has of late been a flurry of such deal-making in all sorts of commodities businesses.
It is important to remember, though, that the basic tools of business are commodities.
Instead, companies talk in terms of operational performance, asset management, business continuity, security of supply of commodities, energy and water, workforce health and well-being.
And Anglo recently sold its zinc business to Vedanta, an Indian mining company, for $1.3 billion.Cutting diamonds Anglo still has other assets it must get rid of, to concentrate on the business of selling profitable bulk commodities to China.
In November 1999, the company opened EnronOnline, an Internet site where buyers and sellers of commodities can conduct business with the company.
