First quarter 2000: EBS announces $59 million in revenues. It gets almost the entire amount by exchanging surplus strands of fiber on its own network for strands built by competitors that expand its reach. This helps to build out EBS’s virtual network, and it also taps into an accounting oddity that Enron is happy to exploit: the fiber Enron is selling can be accounted for as an immediate gain, while the fiber it is purchasing can be depreciated over 20 years. Though no cash changes hands, this produces an instant boost to the bottom line for both parties. These deals, popular among many
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