The End of Laidlaw

摘要

On January 28,2004, a U.S. federal judge ordered two former high-level employees of Laidlaw Environmental Services (LES) to pay about US$590,000 in penalties for overstating the company's earnings. The U.S. SEC said that Kenneth Winger, the former CEO, and Paul Humphreys, the former chief financial officer, filed reports from the fiscal years 1997 to 1999 with more than US$530-million in false income. According to the SEC, Humphrey initiated the scheme while Winger went along with it by signing his name to documents. The executives recorded approximately US$38-million of cash generated by speculative derivatives transactions, further distorting the company's true financial picture. It was a sad stumble for Winger - a Canadian who started with Alberta-based transportation giant Trimac, that launched hazardous waste company Tricil in 1973 as a joint venture with chemical company CIL (now ICI). Winger was a Tricil director when Laidlaw Inc. bought the company in May 1991, and was put in charge of subsidiary LES a couple of years later. He led LES in a dramatic reverse takeover of haz-waste incineration company Rollins Environmental, and grew the business to an eventual market cap of $588 million (although it carried a large $3.2-billion debt).