The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron

by Bethany McLean

By early 2000, Lay owned 5.4 million shares of Enron stock, worth some $380 million, and Skilling owned 2.3 million shares, worth about $160 million. For his work in 1999, Lay got a $1.3 million salary and a cash bonus of $3.9 million, plus another $1.2 million under the performance unit plan, which handed out money based on the performance of Enron’s stock relative to other investments. The board also handed Lay almost a million additional options and shares of restricted stock. Skilling, whose salary was $850,000, got a cash bonus of $3 million. And it wasn’t just the top-tier executives. According to an analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation, in 1998, Enron’s 200 most highly compensated employees took home a total of $193 million in salaries, bonuses, and various forms of stock. In 1999, that leaped to $402 million; in 2000, they took home $1.4 billion. For their work in 2000—the last full year before Enron went bankrupt—each of the top 200 employees made over $1 million; 26 executives made over $10 million. In 2001, the year Enron went bankrupt, at least 15 employees made over $10 million.