Enron senior staff to get £24m

SENIOR staff and traders at Enron Europe are to receive pay and bonuses averaging up to £240,000 each to help the administrators unravel the company' multi-billion pound debts.

At the creditors' meeting of Enron Europe in central London, representatives of the businesses owed money by Enron said the 100 staff that administrators kept on at the company's plush Victoria headquarters will earn between £20m and £24m.

The administrators from PricewaterhouseCoopers are chasing what they reckon to be around £96m of money owed to Enron's London-based energy trading business. They admit, however, that the liabilities of Enron Europe's energy trading subsidiary total around £700m. Liabilities of the Enron Europe group run into billions of pounds. The group owes its crashed American parent alone £2bn.

Administrators' fees are expected to run into tens of millions of pounds over the coming months as they unravel Enron Europe's highly complex network of businesses. The prospects of eventual returns for creditors do not look good, with early estimates putting it at less than 10p in the pound.