John Fees promoted to president, CEO of McDermott International

By Ray Reed

Published: August 15, 2008

John Fees, the president and CEO of nuclear company Babcock & Wilcox in Lynchburg, will become president and CEO of its parent company, McDermott International.

The company’s directors announced the promotion Friday and said it will become effective Oct. 1.

B&W provides services to the fossil-fuel and nuclear power industries, along with fuel for the Navy’s nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.

Fees will relocate to McDermott headquarters in Houston.

His successor in Lynchburg will be announced later, Babcock & Wilcox spokesman Jud Simmons said.

Fees’ civic activities in the Lynchburg area, where B&W employs about 2,300, include serving as chairman of United Way of Central Virginia and on the board of Centra Health.

Fees is a career B&W manager who started work there after college in 1979.

The announcement Friday culminated an eventful week at McDermott International.

On Monday, McDermott announced a key acquisition of a Tennessee nuclear company, and also reported second-quarter results that got a chilly reception on Wall Street.

The company announced higher second-quarter revenue driven mostly by its J. Ray McDermott S.A. unit, which provides offshore oil and gas construction services.

McDermott’s per-share earnings for the quarter were up 17 percent, but its revenue came in below expectations. Some Wall Street analysts lowered their estimates of the stock’s value, and its price on the New York Stock Exchange slid from $41.88 on Monday to close Friday at $34.18, off 23 percent for the week.

On Thursday, McDermott announced a key change to its oil-services unit’s management, naming John T. Nesser III as executive vice president and chief operating officer of McDermott S.A.

In Houston, Fees will succeed current chairman and CEO Bruce Wilkinson, who announced in February that he would retire on Sept. 30.

In addition to his Lynchburg civic activities, Fees serves on the boards of the Nuclear Energy Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers.

McDermott also announced that Ronald Cambre would become non-executive chairman of the board on Oct. 1. Cambre has been a board member since 2001.

This summer has brought announcements from McDermott of three acquisitions, including a disclosure on Monday that it would buy Nuclear Fuel Services Inc., of Erwin, Tenn., which provides specialty nuclear fuels and related services.

NFS and B&W are the only companies licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to make, possess and store the nuclear material that powers naval vessels.

NFS also converts government stockpiles of highly enriched uranium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel for a power plant in Alabama.

In July, McDermott announced it would purchase Delta Power Services, a Houston-based operations and maintenance provider for the power-generation industry. Olympus Holdings LLC owned Delta.

Delta provides services to nine power plants around the country, including Dominion Power’s Clarksville plant in Mecklenburg County.

B&W also purchased the Intech group of companies, which provide inspection and maintenance services for nuclear power plants in the U.S. and in Canada.

The group included Intech Inc. and Ivey-Cooper Services in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Intech International of Canada.