David Fountain serves as senior vice president, legal, chief ethics and compliance officer and corporate secretary for Duke Energy. He oversees communications with the company’s board of directors and ensures they are apprised of corporate governance and compliance matters. In addition, he has responsibility for corporate legal issues, such as employee relations, mergers and acquisitions and disclosures, and fostering an accountable, transparent and ethical culture. He assumed his current position in November 2018.
Previously, Fountain served as Duke Energy’s North Carolina President, serving approximately 3.3 million electric retail customers and 717,000 natural gas customers. He was responsible for the financial performance of Duke Energy’s regulated utilities in North Carolina and managing state and local regulatory and government relations, and community affairs. He also had responsibility for advancing the company’s rate and regulatory initiatives, water strategy, hydroelectric licensing and lake services. Prior to that, he served as senior vice president of enterprise legal support for Duke Energy.
Fountain joined Carolina Power & Light in 2000 as an associate general counsel, providing support for the merger with Florida Progress, which formed Progress Energy. In 2003, Fountain was promoted to deputy general counsel, managing the commercial transactions practice group that provided advice and support for corporate governance and securities matters; wholesale power, natural gas and coal transactions; and divestitures, mergers and acquisitions across the enterprise. The group expanded in 2006 to include nuclear and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission matters. In 2008, he assumed the role of general counsel for corporate services for Progress Energy. From 2009 until the close of the merger between Duke Energy and Progress Energy in July 2012, Fountain served as vice president of Progress Energy’s legal department. He also led the merger-related legal, regulatory and shareholder approval processes for Progress Energy. Before joining the company, Fountain practiced transactional and environmental law at the predecessor firm to McGuireWoods LLP in Charlotte, N.C.
Raised in Guilford County, N.C., Fountain earned Juris Doctor, Master of Business Administration and Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a member of the North Carolina Bar Association and a graduate of Leadership North Carolina.