Fury over €785 payment to Enron 'fat cats'
Top Enron employees reaped $744m (€785m) of payments and stock in the year leading up to its bankruptcy filing, the company has disclosed.
Representatives of former workers and shareholders of the US energy giant responded angrily to the bankruptcy court filing, accusing the 144 senior managers of essentially raiding Enron’s coffers while leaving their clients with relatively little or nothing at all.
Enron disclosed in a 1,436-page filing with the federal bankruptcy court in New York that the executives received dlrs 309.5 million (€327m) in salary, bonuses, long-term incentives, loan advances and other payments. The executives also exercised stock options and received stock valued at dlrs 434.5 million (€459m), according to the filing.
Among the executives who shared in the pay and awards were former chairman Kenneth Lay, ex-chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow. Army secretary Thomas White, who ran Enron’s retail energy services unit, was also listed.
Eli Gottesdiener, a Washington lawyer representing 24,000 participants in Enron retirement plans who lost as much as dlrs 1 billion (€1.47bn) on the collapse of Enron’s stock, said: ‘‘It’s outrageous. My clients find it outrageous and it’s just more evidence that people at the top knew that they better get, while the getting was good.
‘‘And they did, and my clients are left holding the bag. They drained the company of hundreds of millions of dollars,’’ Gottesdiener said.
Besides the executives pay and awards, Enron funded a retention bonus plan in autumn 2001 with dlrs 50 million (€53m) to keep 76 employees ‘‘deemed critical’’ to the energy company’s wholesale trading operations. Shortly thereafter, the company’s proposed merger with cross-town rival Dynegy failed.
Enron filed for bankruptcy on December 2.
