Early Life and Career
Lay was born in Tyrone, Missouri, the son of Ruth (née Rees) and Omer Lay. His father was a Baptist preacher and some-time tractor salesman. When Lay was a child, he delivered newspapers and mowed lawns. Early on, he moved to Columbia, Missouri and attended David H. Hickman High School and the University of Missouri where he studied economics, receiving a B.A. in 1964 and an M.A. in 1965. He served as president of the Zeta Phi chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at the University of Missouri. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Houston in 1970 and soon after went to work at Exxon Mobil Corp., the successor to Humble Oil & Refining.
Lay worked in the early 1970s as a federal energy regulator. He then became undersecretary for the Department of the Interior before he returned to the business world as an executive at Florida Gas Transmission. By the time energy was deregulated in the 1980s, Lay was already an energy company executive and he took advantage of the new climate when Omaha-based Internorth bought his company Houston Natural Gas and changed the name to Enron in 1985. The much larger, better capitalized and more diversified Internorth was then used as an asset to propel his efforts at Enron. He also was a member of the board of directors of Eli Lilly and Company.
Lay was one of America's highest-paid CEOs, earning a $42.4 million compensation package in 1999. In December 2000, Lay was mentioned as a possible candidate for President Bush's Treasury secretary along with J.P. Morgan & Co. head Douglas A. Warner III and a few others. Lay dumped large amounts of his Enron stock in September and October 2001 as its price fell, while encouraging employees to buy more stock, telling them the company would rebound. Lay liquidated more than $300 million in Enron stock from 1998 to 2001, mostly in stock options. As the scandal unfolded, Lay insisted he wanted to "tell his story," but later reneged on a promise to testify to Congress, taking the Fifth instead. Condé Nast Portfolio ranked Lay as the 3rd worst American CEO of all time.
Lay had been married to his second wife and former secretary, Linda, for 22 years and had two children, three stepchildren, and twelve grandchildren.
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