Executives Keep Low Profile at CEO Convention on Energy

By BOB TITA
While the swank Umstead in North Carolina won't ever be confused with a bunker, the siege atmosphere was inescapable when a hundred or so chief executives, chairmen and former executives convened last week for a meeting of the exclusive Business Council, an association of business leaders who discuss policy issues.
Most chief executives attending the meeting at the resort near Raleigh kept low profiles, avoiding the hotel's bar, restaurant and other public areas.
A detail of corporate security guards kept reporters and anybody else not credentialed to participate in the two-day discussion of energy issues far away from the council's forums, dinners and social gatherings.
The gloomy, wet and unseasonably cool weather provided little incentive for members to even venture outside of the luxury resort to a nearby golf course or for a stroll through Umstead's wooded trails.
Many members, including Business Council Chairman James Owens, chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc., declined interview requests, citing securities regulations that restrict them from commenting about their companies in the days leading up to quarterly earnings reports.
Executives who made the rounds of business-news networks' remote studios or participated in the Council's lone press briefing made sure their comments were mostly of the vanilla variety.
"I think this country is an amazing, vibrant place and it's raring to go," said JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon when asked to comment about the Dow Jones Industrial Average breaking the 10,000 level on Wednesday.
However, at dinner, one CEO said that executives chewed over the news that one of their brethren, Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis, agreed Thursday to forfeit his $1.5-million salary for 2009 under pressure from the U.S. government's executive pay czar for companies that received the most federal aid during the credit market crackup.
Some complained the government's pursuit of Mr. Lewis's pay and scrutiny of his decision to purchase crumbling investment bank Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. last fall merely reinforces the public's negative perception of CEOs as reckless managers concerned more about their own compensation than the fates of their companies.
"It's a false representation of who we are and what we're about," said Wick Moorman, chairman and CEO of railroad Norfolk Southern Corp. "The people who run these companies are concerned about the United States and want to do the right thing not only for their companies but for their country."
Mr. Moorman maintains Mr. Lewis's critics are forgetting that Bank of America purchased Merrill Lynch last fall at the urging of the federal government as it scrambled to keep large financial institutions from collapsing and providing momentum to the financial crisis.
The deal was later blamed for huge losses by Bank of America. Mr. Lewis recently announced he will retire at the end of the year.
"Here's a guy who was told by the government essentially what to do and he did it," Mr. Moorman said. "He had things happen that were completely out of his control and then he was vilified and told: 'You don't deserve any money. You did a bad job.' "
Council members made no secret of their growing anxiety about the federal government's elevated level of intervention in the U.S. economy amid signs that the recession is close to ending.
In a survey of 115 Business Council executives released last week, 46% of them said the federal government's should begin dismantling its credit- market supports to avoid a spike in inflation. In the council's previous survey, which was released in May, just 15% of the executives supported unwinding federal credit supports.
Despite executives' usual preference for free-market solutions, many appear willing to accept a government-mandated structure for energy use and climate-change policy.
The Business Council survey showed that 34% of the respondents disagreed that market-based approaches are a better way to address energy conservation and reduce carbon emissions, while 38% agreed and 28% were neutral.
The meeting was attended by several executives and former executives for companies that have broken ranks with companies and business groups opposed to pending legislation to regulate carbon emissions by industrial companies. Most of them opted to avoid airing their differences in public.
Write to Bob Tita at robert.tita@dowjones.com