Question:
We realize, and certainly you realize, the world has changed," Clark Smith, president of El Paso Corp.'s North American merchant energy business, told the crowd. But El Paso, he emphasized, is not at all "similar to the other company that begins with an Eany ideas?

Answer: El Paso's stock last year was down more than 37 percent, Calpine's plummeted 62 percent and Williams Cos. Inc. dropped 36 percent. Dynegy , which called off its acquisition of Enron last fall, lost more than 50 percent of its value.

"The only good thing to come out of the Enron situation is that people know who we are," Dynegy's Bergstrom joked during a speech that mentioned the bankrupt competitor's name more than a dozen times.

Although Enron didn't participate in the conference, it still stole the show. Small crowds of investors sipping coffee or bottled water collected periodically outside the ballroom to watch the Enron hearings on a large screen television. Its collapse was the talk of a banquet lunch over filet mignon.

James Elliot, a portfolio manager with Dominick & Dominick Advisors, said even though much of the "bad news for the sector is out there already," most everybody is nonetheless "assuming the worst-case scenario" after Enron and last year's power crisis in California.