Erle Nye, the controversial former head of energy company TXU, today was appointed the new chair of UTIMCO — the investment arm of the University of Texas.
Nye replaces multi-millionaire Robert Rowling, who abruptly resigned last week in the middle of a contentious hearing in the Senate Finance Committee. The state senators were berating Rowling about bonuses UTIMCO had doled out despite a down year. You can read our report on that hearing here.
Nye is a former CEO and board chairman at TXU Corp., a giant Dallas-based company that was bought out in 2007. Nye’s tenure as CEO at TXU ended in 2004 following a financial crisis at the company that collapsed the stock price and nearly knocked the firm into bankruptcy. Some shareholders lost their life savings when the stock tanked.
In 2004, the Observer reported on a whistle-blower lawsuit in which a former TXU insider claimed that Nye and other TXU executives knew about the company’s impending financial problems and intentionally misled investors and Wall Street analysts. Several executives, including Nye, sold TXU shares not long before the stock price tumbled in late 2002.
Before taking over the top job at UTIMCO, Nye had led its ethics committee.