Enron) The bankers, the big deal and the taint of scandal

On 6 August 1999, David Bermingham sent an email to his boss. Bermingham, part of a team working for a US division of NatWest bank, was disgusted. 'I would describe it as three hours at a Leonard Cohen concert' was his summation.

He was talking about a complex financial transaction involving NatWest and the now-disgraced energy trader Enron - a deal that, seven years later, would come back to haunt him and two of his colleagues in spectacular fashion.

The deal would open up the sepulchral world of high finance and cause a bitter legal rift stretching across the Atlantic. The characters involved would be immortalised in a novel and become causes celebres for an unlikely union of human rights groups and City slickers. It would paint a vivid, ugly picture of the underside of corporate banking - a high-octane world of lapdancing, bumper bonuses and cut-throat rivalry stretching from Houston to the Square Mile.


Up until the autumn of 2001 it had been Coulbeck's job to focus on NatWest's American balance sheet. 'He was on the credit side,' says someone who knew him. 'It was his job to approve things. It was a very senior role.' Coulbeck had been reported missing by his wife, Susan, five days before his body was discovered. It is understood he left a suicide note and had made a previous attempt on his life.

Shortly before he apparently hanged himself, Coulbeck, who was 53 and retired from banking in 2004, was captured on CCTV dumping rubbish sacks at a tip in east London. There is speculation the bags contained documents relating to the Enron affair, which friends have suggested rested heavy on his mind although these claims have not been confirmed.

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