YEAR IN BUSINESS Greed, deceit toppled many, but some were winners

WorldCom's bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history, was the year's top business story.
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
It was the year of the executive perp walk as handcuffed corporate chieftains were paraded before the cameras while questionable accounting practices and outsized executive perks pummeled their companies. Corporate scandals shook investor confidence and kept the bear stock market on a tear in 2002.
High-tech, telecom and airline industries pushed up unemployment. Consumers remained the one bright spot as Americans shopped with the same patriotic duty they showed when recession and terrorist strikes dealt us a one-two punch in 2001.
Here's a roundup of the year's top business stories and the business winners and losers of 2002.
TOP 10 STORIES
1. The $107 billion collapse of WorldCom -- the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history -- got Congress and President Bush to OK the most sweeping corporate governance bill since the Depression in hopes of restoring investor confidence. WorldCom eventually fessed up to fraudulently inflating its books by at least $9 billion.
2. Former WorldCom executives David Myers and Scott Sullivan, Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas and ImClone CEO Samuel Waksal were among those made to do perp walks for the press that prosecutors traditionally reserved for the toughest murderers and mobsters.
3. The Bush Justice Department won conviction of Arthur Andersen, the Big Five accounting firm found guilty of shredding documents detailing alleged abuses by Enron, the nation's top energy trader that went bankrupt late last year. The verdict shuttered Andersen, accounting's longtime gold standard.
4. The Securities and Exchange Commission ordered the CEO and CFO of the nation's 947 largest corporations to swear to the accuracy of annual reports and other filings, but the action wasn't enough to save SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt; he was forced out for hiding the fact William Webster, his choice to head an accounting oversight board, is on the board of a company being sued over its accounting practices.
5. While federal authorities fumbled with corporate reforms, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer led the states in tackling Wall Street wrongdoing, starting with a $100 million settlement with Merrill Lynch after subpoenaed e-mails showed its analysts publicly touted stocks that had they privately considered not worth buying.
6. While WorldCom edged Enron's 2001 bankruptcy as the largest in U.S. history, four other 2002 bankruptcies made the list of the Top 10 all-time largest: Conseco ($61.4 billion), Global Crossing ($25.5 billion), Adelphia ($24.4 billion), and United Airlines' parent UAL ($22.8 billion). These failures' cumulative effect and other scandals helped send the stock market skidding in the worst drop since the 1987 crash only to rally -- but well below 2001's 10,021.50 close.
7. CEO paychecks are 500 times what workers make.
8. Mortgage rates not seen since the 1960s encouraged consumers to keep hitting the stores as booming home sales spurred purchases of new appliances and other big-ticket items and mortgage refinancing put money in people's pockets. But with household wealth falling 4.5 percent in 2002 to 1995 levels, experts expect consumers to shut their pocketbooks soon.
9. Americans went broke as never before as almost 1.6 million filed for bankruptcy, up 7.7 percent from 2001's record. "It's the hangover of debt built up in the '90s," the American Bankruptcy Institute's Sam Gerdano said. Still, Congress didn't OK a tougher bankruptcy code despite pleas by banks, credit card companies and retailers.
10. Joblessness finally hit 6 percent, which used to be considered full employment before joblessness fell to a 3.9 percent low in 2000. Times are toughest for almost 1 million long-term unemployed whose benefits end Dec. 28 because Congress let federal coverage expire.
WINNERS
UBill Gates. He still tops the Forbes 400 even though his $43 billion fortune is down from $54 billion a year ago. Microsoft just got a wrist slap for muscling the competition.
UWarren Buffett. No. 2 on the Forbes 400 list, the Sage of Omaha saw his personal wealth rise to an estimated $36 billion even though his Berkshire Hathaway firm took a $3.8 billion hit, due largely to reinsurance losses in the World Trade Center attacks. He says staying away from the tech bubble saved him big time.
UCarly Fiorina. Long considered the most powerful woman in corporate America even before she was hired to head Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina engineered HP's merger this year with rival PC maker Compaq over the founding families' opposition.
UThe insurance industry. Taxpayers will pay claims of up to $90 billion a year for future terrorist strikes under legislation Congress cleared in November after President Bush gave it top priority.
UThe pharmaceutical industry. It helped itself by bankrolling issue group ads for Republican candidates who back the industry's private prescription-drug plan for seniors, raising chances for passage next year. Even sweeter, Uncle Sam will dole out more than $1 billion for smallpox and anthrax vaccines, and Eli Lilly and other vaccine makers got shielded against lawsuits by the law that sets up a Homeland Security Department.
UHershey, Pa. The Milton Hershey School Trust, founded to run a boarding school for disadvantaged children, backed off plans to sell Hershey Foods Corp. after residents of this central Pennsylvania town of 22,000 made their case to a local judge that the sale of the nation's largest candy maker would devastate the community.
UOffshore companies. Tyco International and other U.S. firms that incorporate in offshore tax havens to escape paying American taxes got a huge gift in the Homeland Security bill, which lets Uncle Sam keep doing business with these firms.
LOSERS
UMartha Stewart. Her sale of nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone stock for $228,000 just before the Food and Drug Administration disapproved ImClone's cancer drug proved costly. Not only did the stock sale come under federal investigation but her personal worth took a dive, too, because of the plunging price of Martha Stewart Omnimedia stock.
UJack Welch. The former General Electric chief had an affair with Harvard Business Review editor Suzy Wetlaufer, which landed him in divorce court. His wife, Jane, publicly detailed his retirement package including a penthouse, lifetime use of GE jets, free flowers, wine, dry cleaning and on-call chefs. The outcry forced Welch to surrender $2.5 million a year in perks.
UDennis Kozlowski. The Tyco International CEO spent $6,000 in company money on a shower curtain for his Manhattan apartment, $15,000 for a poodle-shaped umbrella stand and $17,100 for an antique toilette kit, not to mention the birthday party for his wife on Sardinia that the company subsidized. Now Kozlowski is out and under indictment on racketeering charges alleging he defrauded the firm of $600 million.
U"Chainsaw Al" Dunlap. The former Sunbeam CEO, with a reputation as a ruthless turn-around artist, agreed to pay a record $500,000 individual fine to settle an SEC suit accusing him of inflating the stock price of the appliance maker.
UBob Pittman. The media pioneer quit in July as chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner.
UPaul O'Neill. Ousted as Treasury secretary.