Enron has sold its 101-year-old mechanical and construction company – one of its few businesses operating outside bankruptcy – to the company’s management and a group of financiers.
Limbach Facility Services, based in Pittsburgh, specializes in commercial construction projects such as hospitals and office towers. FdG Associates bought the company for about $80 million, and fifty members of Limbach’s management also have a stake in the business.
“When the bankruptcy occurred, the two things we needed to operate – cash and bonding – evaporated overnight,” Stephen Wurzel, chief executive of Limbach, told the New York Times.
Wurzel convinced Enron officials to let him keep the company operating with financing from an outside bank.
The Limbach family founded the company in 1901 and sold it to Vivendi in 1986. Vivendi sold Limbach to Enron in 1998.
Wurzel said Enron was motivated by revenue growth. “In the construction business, that’s a dangerous formula,” he said.
