Ghost of Enron's fall haunts world forum

NEW YORK -- If there is a ghost haunting the World Economic Forum, it belongs to Enron Corp.

Former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay was among the business movers and shakers scheduled to participate at the event, but he was uninvited after the collapse of his energy trading company.

Lay didn't qualify for an invitation here as a corporate titan once Enron filed for bankruptcy in December, forum spokesman Charles McLean said.

Improving the rules by which corporations operate is among the major themes of the conference, which has drawn 2,700 business, government and academic leaders from around the globe.

Enron, once No. 7 on the Fortune 500, crashed last year amid revelations of questionable accounting practices and restated earnings. The company's failure, which cost the jobs of more than 21,000 workers and raised still-unanswered questions about accounting practices and corporate ethics, is a big topic in the corridors but not the focus of much formal debate.

Dominique Moisi, deputy director of the French Institute for International Relations, believes many are still struggling to understand how the energy giant collapsed.

Enron "is a subject which is on everybody's mind -- and rarely in everybody's mouth," he said. He attributes that to "a sense of caution, a sense of self-protection, a sense the issue is not yet ripe."

The questions raised by Enron must be dealt with eventually, he added, "because to a large extent, the Enron scandal is to the world of economy what September 11th was to the world of geopolitics."