AECOM said Friday that CEO and Chairman Michael Burke plans to retire by next year, either once his successor is found or ahead of the company’s 2020 yearly shareholders meeting scheduled for March.
Burke will be the last executive to hold the dual title, the Los Angeles-based infrastructure and engineering multinational said in a press release. The positions will be separated once the new CEO starts work.
The announcement comes as AECOM advanced the sell-off of its Management Services branch, which holds its contracts with the Department of Energy and other federal agencies, along with its nuclear decommissioning operations.
“On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Mike for his service as CEO and his significant contributions to the Company,” AECOM board member Steven Kandarian said in the release. “Through Mike’s stewardship, we have created substantial value for the Company and our shareholders over the past year, and we are well-positioned to continue those value creation initiatives as we move into this next phase for AECOM following the completion of the sale of our Management Services business. The Board greatly values and appreciates Mike’s continued leadership and assistance through a smooth transition.”
Burke started at AECOM in 2006 as chief financial officer, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was promoted to president in 2011 and then to chairman and CEO in 2014.
He previously spent 15 years at the accounting and professional services firm KPMG, the last 10 as a partner.
In the release, AECOM also announced a change in the makeup of its Board of Directors following enactment of a governance deal with investment firm and shareholder Starboard Value.
The agreement allows Starboard to recommend three new independent directors to the board, including Starboard Managing Member Peter Feld. The board will add Robert Card and Jacqueline Hinman by Dec. 19. Two longtime board members, James Fordyce and Linda Griego, have retired, the press release says. Kandarian will become lead independent director on the board.
The changes will temporarily increase the board to 11 members. However, one unidentified member will not seek re-election at the shareholders meeting, dropping the board back to 10 members.
AECOM expects by February to complete the $2.4 billion sale of Management Services to a joint venture established by New York City-based investment firms American Securities and Lindsay Goldberg. AECOM primarily will retire debt and buy back stock using proceeds from the deal.
A multinational medical isotope company jumped the gun in demanding that the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “show cause” against termination of its application for a federal license to export weapon-grade uranium to Europe, according to a lawyer for the agency.
In any case, the argument laid out by Curium has no merit, NNSA counsel Zachary Stern wrote in a Nov. 15 motion asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny the request.
The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon branch in August applied for an NRC license to export 4.8 kilograms of highly enriched uranium for use by the Belgium-based Institute for Radioelements (IRE) in production of medical isotopes.
London-based Curium in September filed for an adjudicatory hearing in the application, as did U.S. isotope producer NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative, and a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the University of Texas at Austin. They broadly argued that export of HEU poses a nuclear proliferation threat and undercuts companies that have made the expensive conversion to using proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium for isotope manufacturing.
The NRC has not yet ruled on the petitions. Curium, meanwhile, on Nov. 6 filed another motion urging the commission demand that the NNSA make the case why its application should not be eliminated. The company based its case on the fact that the federal agency did not file any responses with the NRC to the hearing and intervention requests.
Stern wrote that Curium does not yet have standing to make such a demand because at this point it remains a petitioner rather than an actual party to the licensing proceeding.
In addition, federal law does not require the NNSA to respond in writing to intervention petitions, according to Stern.
“In this export license proceeding, DOE/NNSA continues to participate in these proceedings, and is awaiting further orders of the Commission as to how the Commission proposes to proceed with its review of DOE/NNSA’s license application,” the lawyer wrote.
Attorneys for Curium fired back on Wednesday in a response to uphold the company’s motion for the NNSA to show cause to sustain the license application. They said the agency filed its argument against the “show cause” demand several days past the five-day deadline under the applicable federal regulation. The “highly unusual circumstances” of the case also should support Curium’s filing even though it has not been made a party to the export-license proceeding, the new response says.
“Curium acknowledges that its Motion is an unusual one,” according to its attorneys. “At the same time, however, rarely has an applicant intentionally chosen not to defend its application in response to multiple petitions to intervene—something that actually goes beyond the examples cited in Curium’s Motion. And DOE should not reap the benefits of its inaction by having any disputes in the record construed in its favor.”
Two U.S. senators last week pressed the top appropriators in each chamber of Congress to ensure communities near retired nuclear power plants receive millions of dollars of economic assistance in the current federal budget year.
“Strong funding is necessary to support public works investments and economic diversification initiatives in communities across the country,” Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) wrote in a Nov. 14 letter. “The scale of the challenges facing these communities, in addition to further expected nuclear power plant closures, creates a need for robust economic adjustment assistance funding.”
The letter was submitted to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Vice Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and House Appropriations Chair Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) and Ranking Member Kay Granger (R-Texas).
The report for H.R. 3055 specifically would provide $17 million in assistance for nuclear closure communities through the Economic Development Administration. In the report, the House Appropriations Committee said the funds should be used for programs “which shall include, but not be limited to, public works investments and economic diversification initiatives in communities impacted by recent or scheduled nuclear power plant closures.”
The House in June passed the legislation, a “minibus” appropriations package covering the Departments of Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, and other agencies. The Senate passed its version of the spending bill in late October.
Duckworth and Collins asked the appropriators to ensure the $17 million is in the conference report for the final version of the bill. Duckworth, with co-sponsors including Collins, in June introduced the STRANDED Act, which would provide federal assistance to communities left with radioactive used fuel at nuclear power plants. The bill was referred to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
From The Wires
From the Bismarck Tribune: The Williams County, N.D., Board of County Commissioners delayed a decision on allowing disposal of Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (TENORM) waste at a local landfill.
From The News-Herald: The Ohio Supreme Court will consider questions regarding the proposed state referendum to undo a nuclear power bailout bill signed into law earlier this year.
