Enron auction enters second day

An auction of property which belonged to the collapsed energy giant Enron was entering its second day today.

Nearly 2,000 buyers anxious to claim a piece of history attended the first day of the sale at Enron’s European headquarters in Victoria, central London, yesterday, while thousands more turned to the Internet to make their bids.

The three-day sale is taking place on the instruction of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the joint administrator of Enron Europe, and auctioneer Peter Bache said he believed it was the biggest auction of its kind yet attempted.

‘‘This is an unprecedented sale. We’ve had more than 5,000 bidders from 37 countries registered - the interest has been phenomenal. The fact that it is Enron property going under the hammer has heightened the interest.’’

Mr Bache said his firm would not be saying how much individual lots had sold for, or how much the total auction had made, because it was a bankruptcy sale.

But he said the items on sale included 4,000 computer monitors, 3,000 personal computers, the entire telephone switchboard - said to be the biggest in Britain - 50 plasma television screens and a range of executive furniture.

Items of particular interest include the 11-metre (33ft) maple and walnut boardroom table, which stretches half the length of a cricket pitch, and a special gauge model railway set, used in the company to encourage brokers, who would fill its carriages with whatever commodity they were buying or selling, such as copper or coal.

The infamous shredders which were used to stop information being leaked out of the company, however, were withdrawn from the sale.

Queues began forming outside the auction at 7.30am yesterday, two-and-a-half hours before it began, and thousands were turned away once the venue was full.

More than 9,000 lots are to be sold by Friday by Bache Treharne in the UK and Internet auctioneers DoveBid of California, whose web site has attracted one hit every five seconds over the past four days.

Offers of up to £1,000 have already been made for the giant stainless steel letter E which was the world-famous logo for the troubled firm.

A would-be bidder who viewed the preview, added: ‘‘It is so lavish inside, if the shareholders who lost money could see it they would be sickened.’’