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Winners and Losers: Utility Strategy and Shareholder Return

Diversified companies lead (and the globals lag) over the past five years.

The unbundling of services and companies in the electricity and natural gas industries have created unprecedented opportunities to reinvent the traditional integrated utility model, with a broader array of attendant risks and rewards. But this past year was clearly one of retrenchment and strategic soul searching, allowing an opportunity to re-examine the sector for winning business formulas.
Byline: 

James Coyne and Prescott Hartshorne

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Perspective: Don't Fence Me Out

Hard-and-fast ring-fencing rules are not the best way to maintain order in the partially deregulated utility sector.

In times of stress due to financial setbacks or pending merger issues, regulatory ring-fencing or internal company structural separation can serve a beneficial purpose. But beware! Predicting the future is an impossible task: Utility regulators should hesitate before putting policies in place today that limit managerial discretion in the future, based upon the belief that they possess that ability.
Byline: 

Steve Fetter

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CFOs speak out: Growth Strategy for the 21st Century

For The 21st Century

For The 21st Century

Interviews by

So it begins again. After several financially tumultuous years, executives at many of the nation's top utilities can once again look to the horizon and ask the growth question worthy of a Caesar: "What worlds to conquer?"

Utility executives are emboldened by bulging free cash flows, improved credit quality, lower operations and maintenance costs, favorable regulatory treatment, growing service territories, and increasing demand for power.

Byline: 
Richard Stavros
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Long-Term Power Contracts: The Art Of The Deal

Long-Term Cooperative Supplier Relationships

The authors examine a “laddered” approach to pricing, whereby a wholesale supplier, instead of locking in to a long-term contract for 100 percent of current load, would be more secure financially with only one or a few staggered, partial commitments over time.
Byline: 

Amy Roschelle, William Steinhurst, Paul Peterson, and Bruce Biewald

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Business & Money: Fencing in the Regulated Utilities

Credit-rating linkage harms certain power companies. Ring-fencing is the best answer for regulators.

Ring-fencing may be the only regulatory device capable of leveling the playing field and forcing the holding companies to absorb the consequences of failed non-utility investments.
Byline: 

Dr. Fred Grygiel and John Garvey

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Perspective: Leave Green-Power Quotas to the States

Congress should not impose a federal renewable portfolio standard.

The adoption of an RPS by more than a dozen states has inspired and contributed to proposals for a federal green-power quota. Leave the green-power quotas to the states. PURPA should be amended to include an RPS among the retail policies that can be adopted or rejected by state public service commissions.
Byline: 

James W. Moeller

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People

People for August 2004.

Positions filled at FERC, Colorado PUC, CMS Energy, and others.
Byline: 

PUF

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Of Blackouts and Lawsuits

Class-action claims for widespread utility service interruptions are a growing trend.

What legal exposure does a utility face as a result of losses caused by a blackout? Is that exposure limited to individual claims by disgruntled customers, or can it be litigated as a class action?
Byline: 

Gavin J. Rooney and Nicole Bearce Albano

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The New CEOs

Whether utility leaders come from law, engineering, or finance, one thing can be said: Many of the new CEOs have had diverse experiences.

Our annual CEO survey looks at six new utility leaders: Mike Morris of AEP, Robert McGehee of Progress Energy, Michael Chesser of Great Plains Energy, Gary Rainwater of Ameren Corp., Dennis Wraase of PEPCO, and Paul Anderson of Duke Energy.
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

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