Ken Lay's Dark, Ironic Legacy

He was guilty of corporate malfeasance on an unprecedented scale, yet his actions at Enron resulted in positive changes for Corporate America

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By Mark Morrison

July 5, 2006 at 4:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Ken Lay, the disgraced former CEO of Enron who died July 5 at age 64, leaves a legacy of shame. His mismanagement and dishonesty brought down a giant corporation, he was ultimately responsible for destroying thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in employees' savings and shareholders' wealth, and he was found criminally guilty of massive fraud (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/25/06, "Guilty Verdicts for Enron Brass").

Perversely, there's also a remarkably positive aspect to his legacy. In the post-Lay, post-Enron era, corporations are behaving a lot better. Lay's terrible example of how not to run a large corporation helped fundamentally reform U.S. companies' standards of leadership, governance, and accountability.