Houston Chronicle columnist Loren Steffy tells a Seussian tale of Lucky Lou Pai, the former Enron executive sold all his Enron shares before the company imploded and got to keep most of the $270 million he made on the stock sale.
While Loren's column is a must read, this one in particular seemed like an instant classic worth highlighting in our blog.
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Dr. Seuss could do tale for an Enron stock sale By LOREN STEFFY
Former Enron executive Lou Pai, considered by many Enronophiles to be the luckiest guy in the room, reached a $31.5 million deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week to settle insider trading charges.
Investors who sued him claimed Pai sold a total of about $270 million in Enron stock, much of it to settle his divorce proceeding.
The settlement brings his part of the Enron story to a close. He was never accused of a crime, and the investors who sued him eventually dropped him from their complaints.
Pai, then, emerges as a rare victor in the Enron story, a guy who, perhaps unwittingly, got out at the right time and walked away with millions.
Here then, with apologies to Dr. Seuss, is my summation of his saga, the story of Lucky Lou Pai:
In the faraway land of Enron-Gone-By
Lived a really lucky guy named Lou Lung Pai.
Enron, you see, was a magical place
Where stocks always rose and Porsches did race
Into this land came a quiet government guy
Who soon would be known as Lucky Lou Pai
Enron was run by Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling
"Stick with us," they said, "we'll all make a killing."
Enron's accounting proved a big lie
But that mattered not to Lucky Lou Pai
He ran retail energy, a couldn't-lose endeavor
He made gobs of money that he doled out at Treasures.
The stock options kept raining down from on high
And filling up the pockets of Lucky Lou Pai.
When his division's profits began to turn sour
Enron cooked up new ways to make the books flower
It moved all the losses to hide them from view
Lou sold all his stock and got divorced, too.
Then Lou ran away, to a ranch in the Rockies
Leaving Enron with bankruptcy and lawsuits to jockey
Investigations brought indictments from the FB of I
But none bore the name of Lucky Lou Pai
Ol' Lou, that luckiest of guys, skated clean away
Even shareholders stopped demanding he pay
Lou was just lucky that way, don't you see
His stock sales had timed out fortuitously
And the SEC, which makes markets safe for civilians?
They asked for only thirty-one point five million
It's a big fine, they said, one of the biggest ever
But for Lucky Lou Pai it's just a small sliver
The rest of the money he himself gets to keep
To pile up like mountains, so high and so steep
And so it is done, another Enron tale told
Justice, it seems, is bought if not sold
So Lucky Lou, now that Enron is over,
Returns to a life of suburbs and Range Rovers.
With the clouds all lifted there's only blue sky
For that luckiest of guys, Lucky Lou Pai.
Loren Steffy is the Chronicle's business columnist. His commentary appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Contact him at loren.steffy@chron.com. His blog is at http://blogs.chron.com/lorensteffy/.
Brought to you by the HoustonChronicle.com
1 comment:
Or, Karen, if you prefer, something from Robert W Service:
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up at the Enron Gas Saloon;
The kids that were handling the money box kept loving that janglin’ tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Lucky Lou Pai gone free,
And watching his back was his regular pet, the federal SEC.
(ETC.)
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