After blocking a hostile takeover bid by a larger Indiana utility, Rogers engineered PSI's 1994 merger with Cincinnati Electric & Gas to create Cinergy. Though the Ohio company was much larger, Rogers was named CEO. In 2006, he pulled off the same trick, selling Cinergy to Duke Energy for about $9 billion while leapfrogging N.C. executives to succeed Paul Anderson. After moving to Charlotte, Rogers quickly stepped up as a key leader in arts, philanthropy and politics. He co-chaired the campaign to bring the 2012 Democratic National Convention to Charlotte, then directed Duke to cover the event's operating deficit to the tune of $6 million. "It was in his nature to get in the middle of things and make something happen," retired banker Hugh McColl Jr. says. His final, biggest stroke was the $32 billion acquisition of Raleigh-based Progress Energy in July 2012, which created the largest U.S. investor-owned electric utility and entailed an unusually brazen courtroom coup.