Entergy CEO Leo Denault | Entergy

Entergy on Wednesday announced that chairman and CEO Leo Denault will step down early next year after a decade at the utility’s helm.

The Entergy Board of Directors has elected current CFO Drew Marsh to succeed Denault as CEO, effective Nov. 1, in an overlapping transfer of power. Denault will continue to lead the board as chairman until his retirement.

Entergy said the move is part of an “orderly and planned leadership succession process.”

Denault, 62, has spent 23 years with Entergy, becoming an executive vice president and CFO in short order a few years after his arrival. He has served as chairman and CEO since 2013, when he took over for J. Wayne Leonard as Entergy transitioned into MISO membership. Denault and Leonard are Entergy’s only two CEOs in the last 24 years; Leonard, who died in 2018, became CEO in 1998.

In a press release, Entergy’s lead independent director Stuart Levenick said Denault has “strengthened the business and positioned Entergy well for the future.” Levenick also said he’s “confident that Drew will carry the torch and continue serving all of Entergy’s stakeholders well by creating sustainable value today and for future generations.”

Marsh, 50, joined Entergy in 1998, serving in several financial planning and strategy roles before becoming CFO in 2013. Kimberly Fontan will become Entergy’s CFO; she has served as a senior vice president and chief accounting officer since 2019.

“I am both grateful and honored by the confidence the board has placed in me, and I’m honored to follow in my colleague and friend Leo Denault’s footsteps,” Marsh said. “I will uphold Entergy’s values and the strategy that he has instilled in our leadership team.”

Denault said his transition comes at a “logical time,” pointing out that Entergy recently successfully pulled off its “planned, multi-year strategy” to exit the merchant nuclear power business.

Entergy owned six merchant nuclear power plants when Denault began managing the company: FitzPatrick and two Indian Point units in New York; Vermont Yankee in Vermont; Pilgrim in Massachusetts; and Palisades in Michigan. All are now closed except for FitzPatrick, which Exelon now owns.

Entergy said Denault played a critical role during and after Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 destruction, making sure the company’s headquarters remained in New Orleans — where it is the city’s only Fortune 500 company — and guiding Entergy New Orleans through bankruptcy proceedings after it lost nearly all of its customers in the storm’s aftermath.

The utility also praised Denault for spearheading an accelerated goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and “advancing climate resilience initiatives throughout communities in the Entergy region.”

For years, Entergy has had a goal to invest about $1 billion annually in transmission capital projects for economic and system resilience reasons. In June, Entergy committed to a $25 billion, five-year capital plan to ramp up decarbonization efforts and to accelerate reinforcements to its Gulf Coast infrastructure to better protect it against future hurricane strikes. The plan includes adding more renewable energy and burying some distribution lines.

After Hurricane Ida darkened the coastal Louisiana grid for weeks last year, Entergy faced calls from climate change activists to harden its transmission and distribution system and make more investments in renewable energy. (See Entergy Fends Off Calls for Tx, Solar, Microgrid Investment.)

Entergy announced other leadership changes Wednesday.

Chris Bakken, currently executive vice president and chief nuclear officer, was named executive vice president of Entergy infrastructure. Entergy said Bakken will have oversight responsibility for both utility operations and nuclear operations.

Senior Vice President of Nuclear Corporate Services Kimberly Cook-Nelson was appointed executive vice president of nuclear operations and chief nuclear officer. The company said Cook-Nelson will be responsible for operations at Entergy’s four remaining nuclear plants in in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. She will report to Bakken.