Early Career
While at Continental Illinois, Fastow worked on the newly emerging "asset-backed securities". The practice spread across the industry "because it provides an obvious advantage for a bank," noted the Chicago Tribune. "It moves assets off the bank's balance sheet while creating revenue." In 1984, Continental became the largest U.S. bank to fail in American history until the seizure of Washington Mutual in 2008.
Based on his work at Continental, Fastow was hired in 1990 by Jeffrey Skilling at the Enron Finance Corp. Fastow was named the Chief Financial Officer at Enron in 1998.
Read more about this topic: Andrew Fastow
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