More Power to Her for Mirant Corporation's New Top Lawyer Julia Houston

Claire Zillman
Corporate Counsel
October 20, 2009

Talk about a company in turnaround mode. After battling bankruptcy from 2003 to 2006, Mirant Corporation posted profits of $380 million in the first quarter of this year.

Julia Houston has been one of the legal architects of Mirant's turnaround. She joined the company mid-crisis in 2004. After serving as deputy general counsel and corporate secretary for the company, Houston was promoted to senior VP, GC, chief compliance officer, and corporate secretary. She succeeds S. Linn Williams, who retired in May. Houston was unavailable for comment.

Mirant's stocks peaked in 2001, but the collapse of Enron Corporation and a major slump in the entire wholesale power sector sent the Atlanta-based energy company tumbling toward Chapter 11 protection in 2003, weighed down by debt of $4.9 billion.

Following a reshuffling of leadership and the sale of some of its assets, Mirant has recharged. The company, which owns 11 power plants in the United States, emerged from bankruptcy in 2006. Its recently reported multimillion-dollar profits are a sharp contrast to the $154 million in losses it had suffered in the first quarter of 2008.

As general counsel, Houston leads Mirant's legal team and oversees its legislative and regulatory affairs. Concurrently, as chief compliance officer, the University of Georgia School of Law grad designs and operates the company's legal compliance and ethics program.

Before joining Mirant, Houston was a security and finance attorney at Delta Airlines, Inc., and worked at King & Spalding as an associate in the firm's corporate practice group. Her practice has primarily focused on securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance.