New CPS Energy chief hired
By Vicki Vaughan and Tracy Idell Hamilton - Express-News July 22, 2010
CPS Energy's new chief executive and president is Doyle N. Beneby Jr., who formally accepted the job Thursday after the CPS board offered it to him in a phone call.
Beneby, 50, is a 25-year veteran of the energy industry and is now president of Exelon Power and senior vice president of Exelon Generation. He will start at CPS on Aug. 1 and will succeed Milton Lee, who retires Sept. 30.
In a brief telephone conference after he accepted a formal offer from the CPS board, Beneby said he is “incredibly excited” about the opportunity to head the nation's largest municipal utility. He cited CPS' status as “a great company that has a great reputation” as a reason he pursued the job.
Beneby has spent his career in the energy industry with investor-owned utilities. He has held several leadership positions since he joined Exelon Corp., parent of Exelon Power and Exelon Generation, in 2003. He was promoted to his current position in May.
“I believe the skill sets I have are transferable to CPS,” Beneby said when asked about transitioning from investor-owned Exelon to muncipally-owned CPS. “And I understand there are high expectations for transparency at CPS, and I expect to exceed those expectations.”
And Beneby said he understand the importance of customer service, having spent more than half of his career in jobs that were directly related to serving customers.
Mayor Julian Castro, an ex-officio member of the CPS board, said, “Beneby's wealth of experience in the energy sector made him a highly qualified candidate. I believe he will serve the ratepayers well and do a good job of meeting San Antonio's energy needs.”
CPS Board Vice Chairman Derrick Howard, who headed the search committee, said CPS and Beneby agreed on a three-year contract that calls for him to receive base pay of $360,000 a year and a chance to earn incentive pay equal to his base pay if he meets certain goals. Half of the incentive pay, if awarded, will be deferred in the first two years of the contracts and paid in the third year.
CPS' hiring of Beneby ended months of speculation, as trustees secretly worked through a list of candidates from Korn/Ferry International, the consulting firm it hired to direct the search.
Four finalists, including acting General Manager Jelynne LeBlanc-Burley, were interviewed in late May. The other candidates' identities were closely guarded by the board, which denied an open records request for release of the names from the San Antonio Express-News, arguing that releasing the names would put the utility at a competitive disadvantage. An opinion from the state attorney general is pending.
Chicago-based Exelon Corp. is one of the nation's largest power companies, with more than $17 billion in annual revenue. Its family of companies are involved in areas including energy generation, power marketing, transmission and energy delivery. Exelon Generation oversees a mix of fossil, hydroelectric, solar, landfill gas and wind generation sources, and it has the largest group of nuclear plants in the nation.
As president of Exelon Power, a business unit under Exelon Generation, Beneby is responsible for managing, operating, and maintaining roughly 8,000 megawatts of natural gas, coal, hydroelectric and solar generation in five states, including Texas.
Beneby said he is familiar with Texas as a result of generation units Exelon owns in Houston and in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. “And I have family in the Dallas area,” he said.
Beneby spent 17 years with Florida Power & Light. After a brief stint at Consumers Energy in Michigan, he joined Exelon.
In May, the American Association of Blacks in Energy, congratulating Beneby on his promotion to president of Exelon Power and senior vice president of Exelon Generation, called him “a trusted colleague, a confident leader, and an important role model to many.”
Beneby will face a number of challenges if he accepts the utility's offer, including steeply rising capital costs, decisions about future power generation capacity, reducing the carbon emissions of an aging group of power plants and the expansion of the utility's renewable energy portfolio undefined all while keeping rates affordable and maintaining CPS' high credit rating.
CPS briefly explored a partnership with Exelon in 2007 when the utility was first looking at options to increase its nuclear generating capacity. It ultimately chose to focus on the expansion of the South Texas Project, of which it already is a part owner.
In another near miss, Exelon could have been CPS' partner in that expansion, had the energy giant been successful in its attempt at a hostile takeover of NRG Energy a year ago.
CPS retains a 7.6 percent stake in the STP expansion, with NRG holding the rest. The proposed expansion is expected to receive crucial loan guarantees this year, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is on track to license the project by 2012.
Express-News Researcher Mike Knoop contributed to this report.
By David Hendricks - Express-News July 22, 2010
The 81-year-old San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce will move to the Full Goods Building at the Pearl Brewery campus next week from its decadelong home at the Alameda Building on Houston Street downtown, the chamber said Thursday.
Gov. Rick Perry will make a formal announcement of the move Tuesday afternoon during a news conference on small-business issues at the Pearl site.
The chamber will move July 29-30 to occupy about 4,000 square feet of Class A office space on the second floor of the Full Goods Building, space that already is furnished.
Complete article at:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/hispanic_chamber_moving_to_pearl_99033949.html