Swiss-based investment banker UBS, which was recently given the green light by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York to acquire Enron Corp.’s wholesale energy and marketing unit, apparently will trim 300 of its 800 jobs in the unit once the transaction is completed, according to UBS CEO Peter Wuffli.

In an interview with Handelsblatt, a German daily newspaper, Wuffli said that the trading unit, once the backbone of Enron’s entire business, will be completely absorbed into UBS’s risk-management system. He also said that once the transaction is completed, he expects the unit, which will fall under its UBS Warburg unit, will resume its former business volumes in six to 12 months. At the end of 2000, the Enron unit on paper was in a class by itself in commodity trading, and Enron estimated that the revenues from the wholesale unit accounted for more than 90% of its income.

In related news, a coalition of more than 400 current and former Enron employees filed a class action lawsuit in a Houston federal court on Monday. The Severed Enron Employees Coalition (SEEC) is asking a jury to “make good” on losses suffered by employees who contributed to Enron’s 401(k) Corporate Savings Plan. Defendants named in the lawsuit include former chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay, who resigned last week; former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who resigned in August 2001; former CFO Andrew Fastow, who was fired in October 2001; Northern Trust Co., the retirement plan’s trustee; and Arthur Andersen LLP, Enron’s accountant, which was also fired in early January.

According to the lawsuit, the defendants “strongly encouraged” Enron employees to invest in company stock while “failing to notify them of the company’s precarious financial condition.” In addition, the “defendants placed restrictions on the employees’ ability to sell the stock in their 401(k) plans, resulting in millions of dollars in losses.” The SEEC is represented by several attorneys, including Whittenburg Whittenburg & Schachter PC and McClanahan & Clearman LLP.

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