Doyle Beneby

Immediately after accepting the CPS Energy board of trustee’s offer to become the next president and CEO of the public utility, Paula Gold-Williams deftly carried out the routine duties she had been performing for more than nine months in the interim.

Okay, so not literally.

Members of CPS Energy’s board of trustees were hoping to punctuate Fiesta this week with an announcement that former CEO Doyle Beneby would be returning to the position he left in October 2015.

Doyle Beneby, who left CPS Energy in October 2015 to lead an international renewable energy company, withdrew his name from consideration as CPS Energy’s CEO on Saturday, only one day after news broke that he was returning to his former executive position at the energy utility.

CPS Energy’s board is expected to convene at an emergency meeting next week to approve a contract that could rehire Doyle Beneby as CEO, sources outside the public utility confirmed on Friday.

Monday marked Nora Chavez’s last day as presiding chair of CPS Energy’s board of trustees and initiated a shuffling of board leadership for the nation’s largest publicly owned gas and electric utility. 
Former Vice Chair Ed Kelley, a San Antonio native who retired as president and CEO of USAA Real Estate in 2005, was unanimously elected by the board to take over as chair and Trustee Derrick Howard, executive director of Freeman Coliseum, will now serve as vice chair. 
As vice chair, Kelley was already actively involved in the search process to find a new CEO.

The CPS Energy Board agreed Monday to initiate contract negotiations with a candidate who is interested in becoming the public utility’s new president and CEO.

CPS Energy officials announced Monday on the public utility’s blog that outgoing President and CEO Doyle Beneby will in fact be leaving his position at the end of the month to lead an international renewable energy company.

It has been seven days since the CPS Energy board formally approached its outgoing President and CEO Doyle Beneby with a deal that it hopes will entice him to stay with the utility.