Ronnie Biggs got 30 years and spent most of it in Brazil. Kenneth Noye got 7 years and spent most of it in Belmarsh. Jeffery Skilling got 24 years and will be electonically tagged. Biggs stole £3m Noye stole £7m Skilling stole an undisclosed amount but presided over the biggest bankruptcy in history a loss of $5bn.

There is no doubt that white collar crime has always been looked at as a secondary offence to normal robbery. In both Noye and Biggs case they were armed and killed people in the process. Whilst Skilling felt he was responsible in some way for the death of the Enron exec Cliff Baxter (he committed suicide) there is no doubt that the role he played was indirect.

Skilling began to believe his own publicity and still to do this day cannot see why Enron went bust and what part he had to play in it. He would put most of it down to the cycle of business. Arguably he saw it happen and managed to extricate himself out before the collapse (something Ken Lay was smart enough to see). Is it fair the sentence is lengthy but it is not custodial.

The markets continued to fall as gas and power prices in the prompt responded to the fundamentals.