Word: lay
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...session was businesslike, and Lay seemed genuinely concerned. Watkins brought along a six-page letter detailing her worries, and Lay promised to have a team of lawyers review the controversial deals. But he decided to use Enron's law firm, Vinson & Elkins, despite Watkins' unease about a conflict of interest. Vinson & Elkins had been paid for work on Condor and Raptor transactions. But Lay went ahead with the review--whose scope he kept strictly limited...
...then, Lay was in the middle of a personal stock sell-off. On Aug. 20 he exercised options to buy 25,000 shares at $20.78 a share. The next day he exercised an additional 68,000 shares at $21.56. On both days, the stock closed around $36, which meant Lay netted nearly $1.5 million before taxes. He continued to be a huge booster for the stock for another month. As late as Sept. 26, Lay would try to reassure Enron employees that "our financial liquidity has never been stronger." But as the stock fell last fall, company employees were told...
Enron too said as little as possible last week as the company tried to reorganize itself and as Lay and other top executives tried to fend off lawsuits filed by angry employees and other investors. The law makes it extremely difficult to confiscate the personal assets of corporate officers in punishment for actions on behalf of the company, but if there were ever a chairman who courted that fate, it is Lay. Last week he put three properties in Aspen up for sale, for $16 million, and huddled with his lawyers in preparation for congressional hearings next month...
...Enron found a little government intervention came in handy. When India delayed approval of Enron's $3 billion power plant in Dabhol in 1996, Clinton White House counselor Mack McLarty instructed the U.S. ambassador in New Delhi to monitor it and gave regular progress reports to Enron chairman Ken Lay. (Four days before the project received its final O.K., Enron gave $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee.) And when Enron was trying to sell its interest in the Indian project, the New York Daily News reported, Vice President Dick Cheney raised the issue in a meeting last June with...
More often than not, Enron's interests and the agenda of George W. Bush have been happily congruent. Enron has given Bush more than $700,000 in contributions over the years. Lay was disappointed last year when Bush backed away from a global-warming plan that would have been good for the natural-gas business, but Bush sided with the company in refusing to back price caps on California energy, of which Enron was a major supplier. Larry Lindsey, Bush's top economic adviser and a former Enron consultant, has battled on free-market grounds to preserve the kind...