Bankruptcy Shedding Light on Standard Company Procedures. (Wall Street's Safety Net - Who Can You Trust?).

ENRON Corp.'s bankruptcy has become a flash point for a number of issues about how companies are run, how outside firms deal with them, and how investors determine their value.

Here are several that arose both before and after the Chapter 11 filing.

Should a company that's filing for bankruptcy or operating under court protection pay "retention bonuses" to keep people on the job?

Enron paid $55 million to 500 employees as an incentive to stay for 90 days. That's equivalent to $110,000 for each employee, or 24 times the severance that the company sought bankruptcy-court permission to pay 4,000 workers fired at its Houston headquarters.

Companies tend to pay these kinds of bonuses for two reasons: to ensure top executives stay in place after a takeover, and to have them stick around after a bankruptcy filing.

Clear Channel Communications Inc. agreed to pay bonuses to 54 executives of Ackerley Group Inc. in connection with an $800 million takeover of the television broadcaster and billboard owner, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Should a company encourage employees to invest in its stock through 401(k) plans, designed to provide tax-free savings for retirement, and contribute shares on their behalf that they can't sell for years?

Enron shares accounted for 62 percent of the company plan's $2.14 billion in assets at the end of 2000, according to an SEC filing. By any measure, the percentage was high.

Company stock averaged 53 percent of assets in similar plans at year-end, according to a survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Investment Company Institute. For all the plans surveyed, the average was 19 percent, or less than a third as high.

Some of the shares in Enron's plan came from the company in the form of matching contributions. Participants were restricted from selling that stock until they turned 50.

Now those employees, undoubtedly including some of the more than 4,000 people fired in the U.S. in the past week, are left to count their losses and file lawsuits.

Are credit-rating services like Moody's Investors Service Inc. really independent arbiters of creditworthiness?

Dynegy Inc.'s proposed $23 billion purchase of Enron hinged on whether the target company would maintain an investment-grade rating from Moody's

It did, thanks in part to the companies' agreement to make six concessions that the Moody's Corp. unit wanted. Phone calls from people backing the takeover, including Lehman Brothers Inc. Chief Executive Richard Fuld and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. CEO William Harrison, surely didn't hurt either.

Nevertheless, Dynegy offer's collapsed. And in the aftermath of that event, Moody's said it would look more closely at "rating triggers" associated with bonds or other contracts -- such as the ones that required Enron to repay $3.3 billion of debt immediately if it received a junk-bond rating.

David Wilson is a columnist with Bloomberg News.