Coyote Blog

Jeff Skilling of Enron essentially sits in jail for being too publicly optimistic about his company's prospects in the face of a liquidity crisis  (despite popular perceptions, he was not convicted for accounting issues associated with off balance sheet entities).

I didn't follow the trial that closely, but my sense is that Skilling denied this charge.  But even if he had admitted it, it strikes me that he would have had an interesting case in his favor.  US securities law takes as an absolute core principle that relevant information must always be disclosed quickly and completely to both shareholders and potential shareholders alike.  It presumes that total openness is the best way to serve shareholders.

But in a short-term liquidity crisis, openness is the kiss of death.  As we have seen over the last 6 months, the merest hint that a liquidity crisis may exist at a company creates a real crisis, even if one did not exist before.  Liquidity crises are crises of confidence among short-term lenders, and the only way to fight such a crisis is to build confidence.  So what happens if the best way to serve shareholders is to keep silent about problems?  What if the best way to fulfill one's fiduciary responsibility to maintaining shareholder value is to be overly rosy in one's pronouncements during difficult times?

Fast forward to the Bear Stearn failure last year, from the Economist:

As recently as March 12th, Alan Schwartz, the chief executive of Bear Stearns, issued a statement responding to rumours that it was in trouble, saying that "we don't see any pressure on our liquidity, let alone a liquidity crisis." Two days later, only an emergency credit line arranged by the Federal Reserve was keeping the investment bank alive. (Meanwhile, as its share price tumbled on rumours of trouble on March 17th, Lehman Brothers issued a statement confirming that its "liquidity is very strong.")

And now, we hear that the Federal Government urged Bank of America's Kenneth Lewis to do exactly what Lay and Skilling were convicted of.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Department chief Henry Paulson pressured Bank of America Corp. to not discuss its increasingly troubled plan to buy Merrill Lynch & Co. -- a deal that later triggered a government bailout of BofA -- according to testimony by Kenneth Lewis, the bank's chief executive.

Mr. Lewis, testifying under oath before New York's attorney general in February, told prosecutors that he believed Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke were instructing him to keep silent about deepening financial difficulties at Merrill, the struggling brokerage giant. As part of his testimony, a transcript of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lewis said the government wanted him to keep quiet while the two sides negotiated government funding to help BofA absorb Merrill and its huge losses.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Department chief Henry Paulson pressured Bank of America Corp. to not discuss its increasingly troubled plan to buy Merrill Lynch & Co. -- a deal that later triggered a government bailout of BofA -- according to testimony by Kenneth Lewis, the bank's chief executive.

Mr. Lewis, testifying under oath before New York's attorney general in February, told prosecutors that he believed Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke were instructing him to keep silent about deepening financial difficulties at Merrill, the struggling brokerage giant. As part of his testimony, a transcript of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lewis said the government wanted him to keep quiet while the two sides negotiated government funding to help BofA absorb Merrill and its huge losses.

Many observers found it odd when Skilling was convicted of giving false information to shareholders but not for insider trading.  The implication, then, was that Skilling was guilty of lying to shareholders but not for personal gain.  Why then, people asked, did he do it?  It is becoming increasingly clear that putting on a happy face during an impending liquidity crisis is the only responsible approach for a leader to take.  Whether he goes to jail for it or gets rewarded by the Feds for it comes down to, what?  PR?

Update: In fact, one can argue that the Enron situation is more honorable than the BofA situation.  Enron management was trying to protect the value of Enron shareholders.  In the case of BofA, the feds demanded that BofA management hide information in order to complete a transaction that BofA shareholders might rightly oppose.

CEO's of companies struggling on the brink of failure often make happy, confident public statements that all is well.  Is that a crime?

Well, it depends on how you look at it.  It comes down to a CEO's fiduciary responsibility to the company's investors, and how that is regulated for public companies.  We think of fibbing to inflate the company stock poorly serves investors, but what about when the company is facing a liquidity crisis?  Isn't public optimism in a liquidity crisis exactly what is needed to serve shareholder's interests?  Consider Treasury Secretary Paulson, and his near criminal declaration of a financial crisis, and the effect these ill-considered statements have had on the economy.

It is hard for me nowadays not to think about Jeff Skilling, who sits in jail for making what the jury thought to be overly optimistic public statements about the company's financial health  (I know you are thinking that he was put in jail for all that off balance sheet accounting and gimmickry, but in fact the prosecution never chose to bring these charges in the trial).  Even Skilling's jury, which was pretty clearly predisposed to convict, seemed to acknowledge that he did not make these statements for personal gain.

So why is Skilling in jail and not, say GM CEO Rick Wagoner?  Wagoner was making a lot of happy-face statements just a few months before his company acknowledged they were facing chapter 11 if Congress did not bail him out.  For extra credit, Wagoner told Congress $15 billion would be enough of a bailout, when he had to have been pretty confident it was not going to come close to cover the hole he faced.

Tom Kirkendall asks some of  the same questions, and looking at the cases he cites, it seems fairly clear that the difference between prosecuted and un-prosecuted CEO's has more to do with their like-ability, celebrity status, and general PR position than their specific actions.

Postscript: I have actually been thinking about the Enron bankruptcy a bit lately for another reason.  Remember that massive natural gas shortage we had when Enron went bankrupt?  Neither do I.  That's because chapter 11 is a pretty well-oiled process in this country.  Enron shareholders, bondholders, and management lost most their investment (and their jobs) but Enron's productive assets and skilled employees didn't disappear.  Enron's assets were bought by other companies who hopefully will employ them more profitably and productively than Enron had.

The same goes for GM.  We have a well-understood and proven process for taking a company like GM through bankruptcy.  However, we are instead replacing this well-understood and practiced process with a new process, called something like "Congressionally-managed restructuring funded with taxpayer dollars."  Does anyone really think this new process is better than the one we have?  Its only advantage, at least to some, is that it may preserve some management jobs, and shareholder and bondholder value, at the expense of taxpayers and any real effort for long-term reform of how GM's assets are managed.