For at least a while longer, what’s left of Enron Corp. is being headed by a guy from west suburban Wheaton.
John J. Ray III, a bankruptcy liquidator with offices in Chicago, holds the job title that Kenneth Lay made famous: chairman of Enron.
Ray is in charge of winding down the notorious Houston energy company that rose and fell under his now-convicted predecessor.
Since it collapsed in December 2001, Enron has struggled to restructure and pay back creditors. Its bankruptcy plan called for the creation of three companies: One holding its gas pipelines, another its overseas assets and the third its Portland General electric utility.
None were to be called Enron.
Remaining assets were to be liquidated. And after the end of the legal process involving Enron’s claims against those it accuses of assisting in the fraud that sunk the company, the Enron name can die forever.
The end is near.
On May 9, Enron obtained $90 million from Credit Suisse Securities LLC, the latest settlement in the so-called megaclaims lawsuit stemming from its bankruptcy. Only a few more major banks remain on its hit list. The company also announced Friday that a group of hedge funds would buy its overseas assets for $2.1 billion from the holding company it formed.
Once the nation’s seventh-largest corporation and Houston’s brightest business star, Enron has been reduced to a single floor in a bland, 16-story office tower connected to a downtown shopping mall.
The elevator landing opens to a dead rubber tree, a few droopy leaves clinging to its denuded branches. Several dozen workers bustle among cubicles flanked with stacks of brown cardboard file boxes.
It may be Enron, as the “Crooked E” logo on its visitor’s pass attests, but it is a different beast altogether from the free-spending giant that once occupied a futuristic 50-story headquarters tower just a few blocks away.
Through a spokeswoman, Ray declined to comment.