Key Personnel - John Antonuk

Key Personnel

John Antonuk

Robert Stright

Charles H. King

Lawrence Koppelman

Randall Vickroy

Donald T. Spangenberg, Jr.

John B. Adger, Jr.

John Antonuk is a co-founder and president of the firm. His 35 years of utility-industry experience includes extensive work involving telecommunications, electricity, natural gas, and combination utilities. He has directed or managed more than 200 consulting engagements. Beyond his considerable management skills and experience, John also brings to Liberty’s clients a strong background in:

Management audits and assessments
Corporate governance
Executive management
Utility planning and operations
Litigation strategy
Mergers and acquisitions
Restructuring
Management of legal departments
Human resources
Risk management
Regulatory relations
Affiliate transactions and relations
Subsidiary operations
Testimony development and witness preparation

John holds a J.D., with academic honors, from Dickinson School of Law and a B.A., cum laude, from Dickinson College.

Project Highlights

Telecommunications Companies

John has served as engagement director, project manager, and hearing administrator for many telecommunications industry projects. Many of them have involved large teams, important policy and regulatory issues, an emphasis on technical management and operations issues, and important ratemaking and financial-performance questions. Some of these projects are:

John served as the engagement director for two comprehensive financial reviews of RBOC operations for state-public service commissions seeking to determine the results being obtained by local telephone operations under existing rates. He has also led many audits of policies, procedures, and compliance, performance measures, and affiliate interests, and has managed comprehensive audits of management and operations, and of affiliate relations and transactions.

John has served 15 different commissions in a variety of capacities under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. He served as hearing administrator for combined proceedings involving nine Rocky Mountain region states and addressing RBOC compliance with the Section 271 checklist, the provisions of an SGAT, and the sufficiency of its performance assurance plan. He has served as an arbitrator of numerous disputes between RBOCs and CLECs involving interconnection agreements. He has assisted several commissions in reviewing RBOC compliance with various provisions of the Act. He has also served as an expert advisor to Commission arbitrators on more than 20 interconnection agreements, and as a staff expert, including service as an expert witness, in a similar number of arbitrations.

Energy Utilities

John has served as engagement director, project manager, and lead consultant in many engagements for public-service commissions and as an advisor to large and small electric utilities. His energy utility experience includes:

Detailed evaluations of utility holding-company structure, governance, performance, financial separation, non-utility operations, and controls at electricity and natural-gas utilities, some of them among the country’s largest.

Providing expert testimony on mergers and acquisitions before several public service commissions.

Evaluating affiliate relations and transactions at more than a dozen electricity, natural-gas, and combination utilities. His work includes detailed examinations of cost-allocation and assignment systems, procedures, and activities, and the structured testing of transactions for compliance with provisions requiring arms’-length dealing among affiliates. He has performed extensive analyses of affiliate energy-trading operations and of the quality and integrity of affiliate performance of energy supply functions for a utility.

John led a major effort by Liberty to assist a New England state to restructure the operations of its largest retail electricity supplier. That effort, which has been successful in bringing about restructuring while providing lasting rate reductions for customers, included examinations of stranded costs, valuation of assets to be sold, assistance in overseeing the process of divesting those assets, pricing of transition and standard-offer service, structuring and magnitude of T&D service rates after restructuring, inclusion of societal benefits costs into restructured rates, securitization and other non-traditional financing of stranded costs, and a host of other issues.

John has managed ten comprehensive management and operations audits of electricity, natural gas, and combination utilities for four different state commissions.

John has also provided a wide variety of services to other types of energy suppliers. He has helped public-power enterprises to conduct strategic planning in a competitive environment, to improve their efficiency and effectiveness in a variety of generation, transmission, and distribution functions, and to identify, evaluate, and value acquisition candidates, both at the individual project and at the enterprise level. He has assisted clients to assess their competitive advantages and disadvantages in competing as utility markets are opened, and he has provided assistance in understanding and using available rate and cost information to assess their prospects for competitive success.

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