Ken Lay

American CEO, former chairman of Enron, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 2 December 2001, the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. The Houston, Texas corporation was ranked by Fortune as the seventh largest company in the U.S. in 2001. In November 2001, it had been considered a stable risk for investors. Nevertheless, there was an undercurrent of rumours that its much-touted stability was not entirely credible. When the giant collapsed, billions in stockholder equity evaporated, and many people lost their entire life savings and retirement security.

However, unknown to the investor, major shareholders and officers had been quietly selling off millions of dollars of stock for as long as the prior six months. The ensuing shareholder lawsuit named 29 former and current Enron executives as defendants, charging that they made $1.1 BILLION by selling Enron stock between October 1998 and November 2001. If Ken Lay had joined them, he could have received a "golden parachute" in excess of $25 million, but he stayed with the beleaguered company to the end, departing in disgrace in January 2002.

Ken Lay had been one of the founders of Enron in 1985. He became CEO in 1999, making about $200 million a year in salary, stock and other compensations. Lay was a pleasant-looking man of average appearance and moderate height, a bland smile and a receding hairline. The son of a Baptist preacher and some-time tractor salesman, he came from a family so poor that they were not always able to celebrate holidays, eating cold-cuts one Thanksgiving. His dad preached optimism, and Lay always had the credo that "things would work out." No party-boy, he was president of a dry fraternity at the University of Missouri where he was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in economics. Upon graduation, he began his career in 1965 as a corporate economist with Exxon Company. He later earned a PhD in economics from the University of Houston.

After serving as an officer in the U.S.