Enron’s former CEO, Ken Lay is dead, NYT reported. I felt sorry for the ‘poor’ guy. He reportedly came from a very humble beginnings to be a CEO of a one time top ten company in the United States, and then to being totally discredited. I don’t know much about Enron’s business. From what I heard, they tried to hide their losses by applying frudlent accounting schemes, and in doing so, painted a pretty picture to the investing public that, in reality wasn’t so, in order to raise their stock prices. Ken’s fault, from what I read is, he didn’t take seriously reports that was made to him pointing out the fact that people under him were ‘cooking the books’, putting up profits that weren’t. Furthermore, with that knowledge, he encouraged investors to put their money into a company that was falling apart. And not only that, after the company has collapsed, he kept on saying that there weren’t improprieties, rather Enron went out of business due to Wall Street Journalists and others of their kind bad mouthed it, which caused investors to ‘drop it like it is hot’.
It is true that he caused a lot of pain in his participated or lack of decisive action, resulting the company’s demise. But it was a sad event seeing his agony. He seemed genuinely thought that he had managed his company properly but outside forces, beyond his control are responsible for its collapse. Despite the merits of his explanation, again, it is sad to see the one so powerful executive that used to rub shoulders with presidents to be abandoned as he has. Failure has no friends, I suppose.
All Enron investors who lost their entire life savings (regardless of their failure to diversify) because of what he and his associates may have done shouldn’t be overlooked. I haven’t seen their pain and agony as I have his, but no less, if not more I’m sure.
All in all, it is sad all around.
Filed under: Economy & Business
