Leadership
Leo P. Denault, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Leo Denault was named executive vice president and chief financial officer in
February 2004. He is responsible for corporate-wide finance, accounting tax,
internal audit, treasury, investor relations, corporate development and
planning activities, as well as information technology. Denault also serves as
a member of the Office of the Chief Executive and is an officer of numerous
Entergy subsidiaries. Denault sits on the Board of Directors of Entergy
Arkansas, Inc., Entergy Gulf States Louisiana, L.L.C., Entergy Louisiana, LLC,
Entergy Mississippi, Inc., Entergy New Orleans, Inc., Entergy Texas, Inc., and
System Energy Resources, Inc. He is treasurer of the Entergy Charitable
Foundation.
In 2010, under Denault’s guidance, Entergy delivered its highest operating
cash flow and highest earnings per share in company history. In fact, Entergy
achieved its highest operational earnings per share in 10 of the last 11
years. Also, Denault bolstered Entergy’s liquidity position with nearly $4
billion in liquidity resources at the end of 2010. Following the September
2008 financial crises and the devastating hurricanes of Gustav and Ike, as
well as hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, Denault maintained Entergy’s
gross liquidity position. Additionally, two new geographically diverse
state-of-the-art data centers were built, totally eliminating the pre-Katrina
risk of the company’s data center in the New Orleans area.
Denault extended the company’s information technology delivery service
contract with Science Applications International Corporation in 2009 resulting
in 75M savings over the six-year extension and consolidated diverse
information technology functions across the company to obtain economies of
scale and cross functional synergies of an integrated team. New systems to
streamline and automate the filing of rate cases were implemented, enabling
the filing of cases more quickly.
Denault was named to Institutional Investor magazine’s 2010 All-America
Executive Team and ranked as the best CFO in the power industry for the second
straight year. He finished among the top five CFOs for the years 2006 – 2010.
Denault was previously vice president of corporate development and strategic
planning. Denault joined Entergy in March 1999 as vice president, corporate
development and assumed expanded responsibility for the areas of strategic
planning, investment analysis, and risk management.
In his role as vice president of corporate development, Denault provided input
to every major investment / divestment decision and served as lead negotiator
in the creation of the Entergy-Koch, LP joint venture. He operationalized a
corporate risk committee to better measure, monitor, and mange business and
commodity risks and oversaw the development of the company’s proprietary
locational pricing and congestion management models.
Prior to joining Entergy, Denault was vice president of corporate development
at Cinergy Corporation where he reviewed every major investment transaction,
including the acquisition of generation, distribution and trading businesses
in the United States and abroad. He played a lead role in PSI Energy’s defense
of a hostile takeover attempt that occurred during that company’s merger with
Cincinnati Gas and Electric to form Cinergy.
A native of Indiana, Denault’s educational background includes a master's
degree in business administration from Indiana University in 1991. He earned a
bachelor of science degree with a double major in economics and accounting in
1982 from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.
Updated 08/11
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