Duke Energy's legal bill from North Carolina for the a 5-month state investigation last year came to a cool $3.5 million.

The N.C. Utilities Commission released the bill total on Monday in response to a records request. The last month billed was for November, but Utilities Commission General Counsel Sam Watson there could be a final bill with miscellaneous expenses.

The state investigation ended last month when Charlotte-based Duke settled the matter with the Utilities Commission, agreeing to changes in its executive ranks, including the mandatory departure of CEO Jim Rogers by Dec. 31, 2013.

Under state law, utilities finance the operations of the N.C. Utilities Commission and are also required to pay the costs of investigations. The bill submitted to Duke Energy only represents the Utilities Commission's cost of the probe, not Duke's cost of hiring multiple law firms to defend itself.

NC WARN asked the N.C. Court of Appeals on Wednesday to review modifying or even revoking the $32 billion merger between Progress Energy and Duke Energy that created the nation’s largest electric utility.

The advocacy group based in Durham alleges that the merging companies withheld material financial information and that the N.C. Utilities Commission did not allow hearings on issues raised by NC WARN.

The group says that the merger's hidden costs will result in increased costs for customers, even though the deal was touted as a cost-saver and public benefit.

The Utilities Commission, which had previously approved the Progress-Duke merger with conditions, had rejected NC WARN’s arguments in December. Wednesday's court filing is an appeal of the Utilities Commission review.

Durham advocacy group NC WARN is continuing to press state regulators to undo the merger between Duke Energy and Progress Energy, using some of its strongest language to date to denounce the $32 billion deal.

On Tuesday NC WARN told the N.C. Utilities Commission it had discovered an internal document that suggests "criminal misconduct and perjury" on the part of Progress and Duke officials in the weeks leading up to their merger.

NC WARN director Jim Warren said the document demonstrates that the companies were deliberately withholding information from each other, from regulators and from shareholders. 

"The shareholders are looking at at $2 billion to $3 billion lunch that they may have to eat," Warren said.

Durham-based drug developer BioCryst Pharmaceuticals will buy Presidio Pharmaceuticals, a West Coast company, in a $101 million stock deal, the companies said today.

Neither drug developer has a product out on the U.S. market today but both cited the potential synergies of combining their experimental hepatitis C antiviral drugs as well as partnering with oral antivirals made by competitors.

The deal is subject to regulatory review and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2013. The companies will combine under a new corporate name and remain headquartered in Durham, with operations in Birmingham, Alabama, and in San Francisco.

BioCryst is developing drugs to treat gout, influenza and hepatitis C. Its flu treatment, peramivir, was approved in Japan and Korea in 2010. Presidio specializes in developing antiviral treatments for hepatitis C.
 

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers touched on all his talking points Thursday morning as the beleaguered chief executive continues making his speaking circuit around the state to reassure the public -- and public officials -- that the newly-merged electric utility can be trusted to act in the interest of the state and its residents.

Charlotte-based Duke has been under scrutiny since merging with Raleigh-based Progress Energy in July, and almost immediately firing Bill Johnson as CEO and reinstating Rogers at the top of what is now the nation's largest electric utility. The firing is under investigation by the N.C. Attorney General and also by the N.C. Utilities Commission, which had approved the merger with the understanding that Johnson would run the combined company.

"The CEO change at the end was a big surprise to this community in particular. That's not what we had in mind at the start of this long journey," Rogers told a group of business people in downtown Raleigh. "And I'm sorry it created more anxiety about this merger. Some of you already viewed the merger with mixed feelings."

Duke Energy is on track to staff its entire 29,000-employee organization by next month in the wake of the Charlotte power company's merger with Raleigh-based Progress Energy.

The newly structured company is also preparing to introduce a new corporate logo and a name change for its recently acquired electric utility subsidiary. That means that customers of Progress Energy, formerly called Carolina Power & Light, will have to get accustomed to a new name: Duke Energy Progress.

Since completing its merger July 2, the combined Duke has now filled the top 675 executive and management positions and is staffing mid-level and lower level slots. What remains unknown is the number of people who will be laid off as a result of the consolidation that will eliminate 1,860 positions company-wide.

"We are making extensive efforts to minimize the number of employees who must leave the company involuntarily," Duke CEO Jim Rogers said in an Aug. 31 letter to the N.C. Utilities Commission. "Our goal is to provide affected employees with options whenever possible.

"In situations where we have exhausted these options and an involuntary severance is unavoidable, we have put in place a severance plan that provides financial assistance for the transition," Rogers wrote.
 

The volume of internal corporate records Duke Energy has filed with the N.C. Utilities Commission as part of the agency's investigation into Duke's conduct already exceeds 5,000 pages.

Duke said in filings yesterday that it plans to make additional disclosures in the coming weeks. The filings are part of the fallout from Duke's ill-fated merger with Raleigh-based Progress Energy, which has exposed deep rifts between the two companies and triggered a pair of state investigations.

Only about 600 of Duke's pages are publicly accessible on the commission's web site -- consisting largely of emails sent between board members and CEO Jim Rogers. They have been filed along with nearly 1,900 pages submitted under seal by the Charlotte-based Duke's Raleigh law firm, Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

The confidential filings cite exemptions to the state's public records laws, which shield records protected by attorney-client privilege as well as corporate trade secrets.

The bulk of the filings, however, were made by the white-shoe New York firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore. This firm is representing six former board members of Progress Energy who joined Duke's board July 2 as part of Duke's merger with Raleigh-based Progress.

Not a single page of the Cravath filings is public.
 

Another top executive from Progress Energy is leaving in the wake of the Raleigh-based power company's troubled merger with Charlotte's Duke Energy.

Duke said today that Vincent Dolan, 57, will step down by the end of this year. That would make Dolan, who will have worked for the Raleigh utility more than a quarter-century, the fifth high-level executive to leave what is now the nation's biggest electric utility in the wake of the $32 billion merger.

No reason was given for Dolan's planned departure. But it's no secret that Duke was disappointed in the way Progress handled its Florida operations, which Dolan had overseen since 2009. Duke officials told the N.C. Utilities Commission in public hearings last month that they had serious concerns about the Progress-Duke merger on account of soaring nuclear costs in Florida, Progress Energy's biggest service area.

In its announcement, Duke lauded Dolan as "an exemplary leader and a tireless advocate for Florida customers."

State regulators want a thorough explanation why private settlements made by Duke Energy and Progress Energy with large power customer should be considered trade secrets and kept from public view.

The N.C. Regulatory Commission said this afternoon it wants the two electric utilities, along with those who entered the confidential settlements, to justify by Friday their rationale for keeping the settlements sealed.

Raleigh-based Progress and Charlotte-based Duke reached about 15 private deals with rural electric cooperatives, municipal power agencies and large industrial power users last year. The deals protect the co-ops, munis and industrials from paying any costs related to the Progress-Duke merger, which was completed July 2.

N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, a Durham group that opposes the merger, petitioned the N.C. Utilities Commission to unseal the settlements, saying the private deals could be detrimental to the public. N.C. WARN was joined by a coalition of media organizations, including The News & Observer, that contend the contents of the private deals should be disclosed.

The parties to the settlements have argued their settlements contain trade secrets, but they have not provided specifics or details. The utilities commission wants "the settling parties to file statements designating the specific provisions of their settlement agreements that they contend are exempt from public disclosure."