The Ultimate CEOs

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The CEO Power Forum: Not all utility CEOs are created equal...

Fortnightly Magazine - June 2005
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We take this to be self-evident after the bankruptcies, ratings downgrades, balance-sheet blowups, and financial debacles that took place in the industry in the last five years.

Those utility CEOs that kept the corporate ship sailing smoothly, growing their companies right through those turbulent times also evidenced this premise.

But while it's easy to judge in hindsight those that took on too much risk, bought too many plants, failed to execute their business plans, or were too ambitious, even a management guru might be hard-pressed to identify tomorrow's successful leaders.

The "back-to-basics" plan so well executed by the utilities in restoring investor confidence (and some executives say they never left back-to-basics) has had the unwanted benefit of once again painting the industry with a broad "plain-vanilla" brush.

While interest rates stay low and economic growth advances at a measured pace, utilities will continue to be the darlings of Wall Street, as a handful of utility indexes show single, and at times, double-digit increases in the last six months.

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