Ex-California utility CEO to receive $2.5m severance amid firm's bankruptcy

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Ex-California utility CEO to receive $2.5m severance amid firm's bankruptcy

PG&E cited potential liabilities from two major wildfires totaling up to $30bn in its bankruptcy announcement Monday

Vivian Ho in San Francisco
Tue 15 Jan 2019 21.01 GMT

A PG&E executive who resigned one day before the California utility company announced it plans to file for bankruptcy is set to receive $2.5m in severance payment.

PG&E announced CEO Geisha William’s resignation on Sunday night, one day before the company declared its intention to file for bankruptcy by 29 January. Despite the company’s uncertain future, Williams would receive the severance payment as well as her accrued pension benefits, “the same as any employee of the company”, Matt Nauman, a PG&E spokesman, clarified on Monday.

Williams took over leadership of PG&E, which is California’s largest utility and serves 16 million residents, in March 2017. She headed the company throughout a series of crises.

Cal Fire investigators determined last year that equipment owned and operated by PG&E sparked a series of fires that struck the north Bay Area in 2017, killing 43 people and destroying more than 14,700 homes.

Investigators are also probing the company’s role in the 2018 Camp fire, which killed dozens of people in and near the town of Paradise.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/15/california-pge-ceo-severance-wildfires-bankrupt

[sandensea]

1. America's royalty is its CEOcracy

Fail or succeed, win or lose, they're invariably rewarded for merely taking up breathing space. And the more spectacular the fiasco, the better.

Nice work if you can get it.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

3. Golden parachutes all around it seems.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

2. Isn't this the company that had that big natural gas leak in CA too? Up on the hill?