When the chief executive of Andersen, Enron's auditor, began to testify to Congress shortly after 10am on December 12, he was the focus of attention in the widening inquiry into what caused the collapse of the once-mighty energy trader.

"I am here today because faith in our firm and in the integrity of the capital market system has been shaken," Joseph Berardino said in a flat voice. "There is some explaining to do."

Lawmakers, journalists and a curious public packed into the Capitol Hill hearing room were not the only ones interested in an explanation.

Enron's collapse was being felt that week from the company's Houston headquarters right across the globe as far as the boardroom of a Japanese auto components maker, the shareholder assemblies of Australian banks, and the closed-door meetings of the Czech privatisation agency.

This FT focus on a narrow three-day period - from that Wednesday to the end of business in New York on Friday - looks at the shockwaves from Enron's bankruptcy as they rippled round the world 10 days after its December 2 Chapter 11 filing.

Those three days in the fall-out from Enron actually began in Tokyo more than eight hours before Mr Berardino took the stand, when Autobacs Seven, the Japanese auto components group, announced it had incurred a Y1.6bn ($12.6m) loss as a result of the forced sale of bonds that packaged some of Enron's extensive debt.

Analysts point out that the fact that the pain was spread so wide means the systemic risk posed by Enron's collapse was probably reduced. But the number and variety of companies affected globally is still striking.

The greatest burden was felt by Enron's key lenders, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup, which were bound tightly into the destiny of the energy trader. Just last week, JP Morgan was obliged to reveal that its full exposure to the company amounted to $2.6bn. Previously it had quantified only $900m of secured and unsecured loans.

The sudden demise of the once-dominant player in the sector had also dented a much wider group of banks, insurers and companies that had bought a part of repackaged Enron bonds, had insured the company's contracts, or simply been customers of the stricken giant.

From December 12 to 14, the energy companies Amerada Hess, Nuevo Energy, Cabot Oil & Gas, Panaco and Petro-Canada and PartnerRe, the Bermuda-based reinsurer, all announced some exposure or impact from the collapse of Enron.

As Mr Berardino testified in Washington that Andersen had erred in its approach to the audit - but that Enron had concealed crucial information about its dealings - other key figures in the saga were preparing to appear for the first time since December 2.

In New York, Kenneth Lay, Enron's chairman and chief executive who had been credited with Enron's success and was now widely blamed for its failure, had shed his beige wide-brimmed hat and coat and was preparing to address disgruntled creditors.

The ballroom of the Hilton Hotel was teeming with hundreds of people. But they represented only a fraction of the thousands named in a 54-page official Enron list of creditors. That list in turn may be only a small part of the number of potential creditors of off-balance-sheet vehicles used by Enron.

"I regret that we're all here today for the purpose that we're here for," Mr Lay began, before handing over to Jeff McMahon, the chief financial officer, who detailed the collapse of confidence that he said had finally doomed the company.

For Enron at least, the decline in confidence had bottomed out, but for many competitors - including Calpine, the California-based power plant owner, Dynegy, which mounted an ill-fated rescue bid for Enron in its dying days, Mirant, El Paso and NRG - the battle to convince the markets of their financial soundness was being waged in those days.

As Mr McMahon pointed the finger at the media, ratings agencies and nervous counterparties, shares in other energy groups were sliding. Concerns about liquidity - the crucial resource that, once withdrawn, doomed Enron - were plaguing Calpine. Worries about the unregulated power holdings of NRG were weighing on the Minneapolis-based group. Around lunchtime in New York on December 12, El Paso announced it would clean up its balance sheet to meet the concern of rating agencies and investors.

On the other side of the world, concerns about Enron had also touched the Australian banks. On Thursday morning in Melbourne, National Australia Bank, the country's biggest, told its shareholders that its exposure to Enron was A$200m (US$xx) - but said things could have been much worse. Two years ago, its chief executive said, NAB's exposure to the US group was three times higher. A day later, in Sydney, Australian and New Zealand Banking Group delivered a similar message.

In New Delhi, meanwhile, CNBC India had flashed a statement from Mirant, the Atlanta-based energy group, saying the company was pulling out of one of India's biggest independent power projects, dealing another blow to the country's power ambitions. The decision was reminiscent of the dispute over Enron's Indian power investment in the Dabhol Power Company, which also started with complaints about a failure to achieve certain milestones, such as security of payments.

DPC, too, was the subject of crucial meetings that day and the day after in Singapore, where two Indian power companies, Tata Power and BSES, were negotiating whether to conduct due diligence to bid for India's biggest foreign direct investment.

As that meeting drew to a close on Friday, another government - this time in the Czech Republic - was feeling the indirect impact of Enron. NRG, hit by the volatility in the markets that week, announced in Prague that it was pulling out of the bidding for the privatisation of CEZ, the Czech power producer.

NRG's surprise statement did not mark the end of a week of turmoil in US markets for Enron's competitors. Calpine's shares fell nearly 20 per cent at the opening on Friday after Lehman Brothers cut its rating on the independent power producer, citing increasing worries about liquidity. Moody's underlined the gravity of the situation, despite Calpine's protests that it was financially stable and in a quite different situation from Enron, by downgrading the group's debt to junk status after the close of the markets. Calpine's shares had fallen 38 per cent in a week.

Back in Houston, where the saga had begun, some of the 4,500 US staff laid off by Enron were attending a job fair - ironically at the very ballpark, Enron Field, that their former employer had named when its success was at its peak.

One of those employees, Humberto Cubillos-Uejbe, complained that Enron had done "the minimum" for those made redundant. He had worked for Enron for three years, most recently as a deal structuring manager for Enron Energy Services. The 32-year-old from Colombia had lost more than $110,000 in his 401(k) retirement savings. Yet he found only four or five companies at the job fair who seemed to offer suitable job prospects.

"You can't expect 5,000 people to find a job," he said. "Right now you need to look nationwide. You have to move."

At 4pm, Houston time, a voice boomed over the loud speaker telling participants the job fair was over.

But for the rest of the world, the fallout from the energy trader's demise had hardly begun.

By Andrew Hill in New York, Sheila McNulty in Houston, Gwen Robinson in Washington, Khozem Merchant in Bombay, and Virginia Marsh in Sydney