On the rebound

Tracy K. Price
president and CEO, The Linc Group

Jack A. Hockema
CEO, Kaiser Aluminum Corp.

When Enron offered to buy his software
company and put him in charge of a $6 billion division, Tracy K. Price thought it was
the opportunity of a lifetime. It turned out to
be the beginning of a two-year nightmare.

Price’s company, FieldCentrix, was rolled
up with three other companies to create
ServiceCo, a new building services company
under the Enron umbrella. Nine weeks later,
Enron collapsed and the newly minted
ServiceCo didn’t stand a chance.

“We never even got the stock issued,”
Price says. “It made the dot-com implosion look like a protracted illness by comparison.”

Even though the ink had barely dried on
their contract, Price’s team was buried with
negative overspray from the scandal. So he
immediately began damage control and tried
to sever his ties to the sinking corporation.

There was a lot of work to do to repair the
company’s tarnished reputation, and he
began by forging a new corporate identity,
renaming the company The Linc Group.”

To combat the nagging specter of the
“crooked E” that continued to haunt him,
Price strove to make The Linc Group the
polar opposite of its former parent company. He took employee accountability to new
levels by operating in total transparency and
purged the company of anyone who wasn’t
on board with his changes.

Price led The Linc Group to more than
$500 million in revenue in 2007. He’s not finished either: The 4,200-employee organization is projecting nearly $600 million in revenue for 2008.

Jack A. Hockema didn’t want to be the
CEO of Kaiser Aluminum Corp. He certainly didn’t want to deal with the burgeoning
asbestos lawsuits, escalating medical and
pension obligations, and underperforming
business divisions at Kaiser, let alone the
avalanche of debt that was threatening to
crush the company.

He was perfectly happy running the company’s fabricated products division, the lone
ray of sunshine in the company.

Hockema had been asked before if he
would be interested in the CEO position. He
declined and said he would only take the
job in the event of an emergency.

A few months later, Kaiser’s CEO stepped
down, and Hockema got a phone call asking if he would honor his commitment.
Hockema stood by his word and currently
serves as Kaiser’s chairman, president and
CEO.

“Somebody had to do it,” he says. “And it
was pretty clear that I was the one to do it
at that point in time. We just strapped it on
and addressed the issues.”

It took Hockema nearly four and a half
years to pull the 2,425-employee company
out of its nosedive, but in 2006, Kaiser
emerged from bankruptcy with its books
balanced and a plan to move forward.