Another Enron scandal

STEVEN Pearson, a partner in Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, suggested this week that making 1,200 Enron staff redundant in 48 hours was one of the hardest things the firm had ever had to do. Perhaps PwC felt the need to make up for its harsh actions by an excess of compassion elsewhere.

At Enron Direct, 15 managers were offered £6m between them for four days' work. At Enron's trading arm, 100 staff have been offered up to £240,000 each to stay on and do their jobs. The traders got the rough end of the deal by comparison with those lucky 15 at Enron Direct. But the money paid out to either group of employees will astound the 1,200 workers laid off just before Christmas with barely a penny of compensation.

As for creditors, who are owed billions of pounds in Europe alone, some are bound to vent their fury at PwC's generosity. No one would dispute that the accountancy firm has a job to do and needs to enlist the support of some Enron insiders to do it.

The amounts of money being proposed beggar belief, however. This is one of the biggest corporate collapses in history. It has left thousands of employees stripped of their livelihoods and their life savings. Many firms with whom Enron did business are in severe difficulty. Some doubtless face financial ruin.

PwC is supposed to be garnering as much cash as it can to help as many creditors as possible. Lavish salaries and bonuses are entirely inappropriate.

ABB ripples
PERCY Barnevik's position as chairman of pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca suddenly looks precarious. His once-unimpeachable reputation is sinking fast.

On Wednesday his former employer, troubled engineering group ABB, said he had received too much pension and it wanted some of it back. The suggestion was that the £61m paid to him had been improperly sanctioned.

Investor,holding company of the powerful Swedish billionaire Wallenberg family, kicked him out yesterday as chairman, with vice-chairman Jacob Wallenberg describing the payment as 'wholly unreasonable'.

Investor, by chance, is Astra-Zeneca's second-biggest shareholder, and who should be a nonexecutive director there but Marcus Wallenberg, chief executive of Investor and cousin of Jacob?

AstraZeneca insists the ABB affair has nothing to do with it and Barnevik will continue as chairman. It will be interesting to see if the Wallenbergs take that view.

If Barnevik is booted out, the spotlight will turn on Goran Lindahl, who is also alleged to have received too much pension from ABB. That means a headache for Anglo American, the mining giant that has named him chairmanelect to succeed Julian Ogilvie Thompson in May.

The whisper from ABB headquarters in Zurich is that Barnevik and Lindahl are prepared to pay back some of the money. But they may be too optimistic if they think that will draw a line under the affair.

Switch time
GERALD Corbett has done the decent thing and refused his bonus at Woolworths. Now shareholders need to know when he is switching from full- to part-time chairman.

Trevor Bish-Jones becomes chief executive next month and Corbett will need to be around for a while after that. Woolies' bankers would also prefer him to remain full-time for a while. And Corbett will want to see evidence of recovery before cutting back his commitment.

There are two obvious dates when he could announce a shift to semi-retirement - the annual meeting in May or the interim figures in August. The latter is more likely.