Enron Corp.’s familiar crooked “E” was auctioned off more than a year ago, and now its storied downtown Houston headquarters soon may belong to someone else. Two years to the day after Enron filed for bankruptcy, the company began taking bids Tuesday on the 55-story building.

The auction, expected to take two or three days, required those interested to submit $3 million in earnest money, with bidding beginning at about $55 million. Harris County, TX appraisers set the current value of the mirrored structure at $92.5 million.

The headquarters now is owned by a syndicate of banks led by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and the syndicate will receive proceeds from the sale. In the late 1990s, the bank group gained ownership interest for $285 million and it then leased the building back to Enron.

An adjoining 40-story tower, also built for Enron but never used following the 2001 bankruptcy, was sold last year for $105 million, about half of its $240 million construction cost.

Until shortly before declaring bankruptcy, Enron’s headquarters housed 7,500 in Houston and employed 20,000 worldwide. Today, it still has 12,000 employees, with 1,200 employees in downtown Houston. However, staff layoffs have continued as projects have been completed, and the remaining employees are set to move to smaller downtown Houston offices at the end of February 2004.

Following the auction, the sale will be subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, which is overseeing Enron’s bankruptcy. If approved, the sale could close early next year.

In other news, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez, who is overseeing the Enron case, has ruled that creditors may sue two prominent Houston law firms, an auditor and several former company executives — including former counsel — in connection with the bankruptcy.

The ruling allows creditors to add the Vinson & Elkins LLP and Andrews & Kurth LLP law firms, former accountant Arthur Andersen LLP and former counsel James Derrick, among others, to a civil fraud and negligence lawsuit that was brought last year in Montgomery County, TX.

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