We will have to wait until Otcober to find out how long the prison sentences handed down to former Enron chief executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling will be.

A US district judge has granted the pair’s lawyers more time to prepare arguments following a scheduling conflict. This one was never going to be easy so we shouldn't be surprised by the delay.

Skilling, covicted on more counts than Lay, is expected to receive the stiffer sentence, with many looking at the 25 years imposed on Bernie Ebbers (the architect of the fraud at WorldCom) as a benchmark.