This involves silly things done to Duke Energy in response to its firing of former Progress Energy chief Bill Johnson as its CEO minutes after the two companies official merged. Some sort of sanction was certainly appropriate, but the options state regulators opted for are questionable. As the Charlotte Observer reports:
CEO Jim Rogers will retire when his contract expires at the end of 2013, with conditions on who may succeed him. Two top lieutenants will be replaced, while a former Progress executive will be brought back as a consultant. Two new directors will be named, neither of whom may have ties to Duke or Progress.
“Just as a general principle, this is absurd in a lot of respects,” said Wake Forest University business professor Dan Fogel, who teaches strategy in Charlotte. “The absurdity is to dip so far into the business as to tell them how to operate and even the number of employees (1,000) to keep in Raleigh.”
Those terms, he said, could make it harder to find a successor for Rogers and dampen North Carolina’s business climate.
Well said.
