Top executive of beleaguered Semco departs

The man who has steered Semco Energy Inc. for the last two years has left the job, effective immediately, the company said Dec. 3.

The company’s board chose an outside director, John Hinton, as its new chairman, and picked Eugene Dubay, currently a vice president, to serve as interim president and CEO. Semco is the parent of the Alaska’s Enstar natural gas utility, as well as a gas utility in Michigan. The two have a total of 385,000 customers.

Heading out the door, immediately, is Marcus Jackson, who failed to find a strategy to turn around the company’s troubled construction division, now up for sale. He’s been chairman, president and CEO since June 2001.

With Semco heavily indebted and skating perilously close to liquidity limits set by its lenders, the company earlier this year cut its dividend in half and forged an agreement to sell Alaska Pipeline Co. to Atlas Pipeline Partners, L.P., for $95 million.