M&A 2002: The Need for Strategic Clarity
What type of merger strategy should energy companies pursue in light of new industry uncertainties?
Repeatable M&A: Creating a Value Chain Reaction
How building capabilities for repeated M&A can increase shareholder value.
Utilities that don’t prepare now for further consolidation cannot maximize value to their shareowners.
A Hope, A Wing, and A Prayer: Toward a Standard Market Design for RTOs
On the virtues and vices of ICAP, ACAP, FTRs, hubs, flowgates, DAMs, and gaming.
An in-depth analysis of the myriad of issues affecting the true development of competitive power markets.
Vertical Integration: Necessity or Distraction?
An analysis of the latest wave of unbundling, re-bundling, and convergence plays in the gas-power industries.
In any industry, companies must choose a portfolio of assets and businesses to own along a value chain. In doing so, they make an implicit trade-off between the benefits of focus and vertical integration.
The Fear Factor
Understanding power company volatility in the context of valuation theory.
A top CSFB investment banker analyzes how recent power sector volatility can be understood in the context of valuation theory.
Utility Valuation: Shedding Light on the Black Box
Experts debate how energy companies should be valued in the wake of electric restructuring and Enron.
Credit downgrades, bankruptcy, and investor backlash against energy companies has exposed how inadequate the valuation of energy companies is. Experts debate just how to value the industry.
I Quit!
EPA director steps down, and tells you why.
I resign today from the Environmental Protection Agency after 12 years of service. I cannot leave without sharing my frustration about the fate of our enforcement actions against power companies that have violated the Clean Air Act.
Bush's Cloudy Skies?
Experts debate whether Bush’s Clear Skies plan on power plant emissions clears the way for better emissions technologies.
The Bush administration has yet to deliver a detailed plan of its Clear Skies program-no legislation has been introduced. Even without many details, there's plenty to argue about. At the top of the list is whether a cap-and-trade program will truly reduce emissions more than the current command-and-control regime.
People (April 1, 2002)
Edward F. Godfrey has been named to the Unitil board of directors. CH Energy Group appointed Steven V. Lant COO. Susan Glasmann and Alan Allred were named senior vice presidents for Questar Regulated Services, a subsidiary of Questar Corp. And others ...
The Doomsday Scenario
Debt + secret triggers = another Enron.
Much the same way that bankers used to worry about a “run on the bank,” where there is an overwhelming demand for liquidity that causes a solvent bank to fail, so should energy companies be worried that their use of material adverse change (MAC) clauses might trigger an overwhelming demand for liquidity that causes a once solvent energy company to fail. Of course, the banks now have the Fed to protect the financial system from a liquidity crisis. No such luck for the energy industry.