Regulating Mergers and Acquisitions of U.S. Electric Utilities: Industry Concentration and Corporate Complication

Regulating Mergers and Acquisitions of U.S. Electric Utilities: Industry Concentration and Corporate Complication
Author: Scott Hempling
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2020-10-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1839109467

What happens when electric utility monopolies pursue their acquisition interests—undisciplined by competition, and insufficiently disciplined by the regulators responsible for replicating competition? Since the mid-1980s, mergers and acquisitions of U.S. electric utilities have halved the number of local, independent utilities. Mostly debt-financed, these transactions have converted retiree-suitable investments into subsidiaries of geographically scattered conglomerates. Written by one of the U.S.’s leading regulatory thinkers, this book combines legal, accounting, economic and financial analysis of the 30-year march of U.S. electricity mergers with insights from the dynamic field of behavioral economics.

Regulating Mergers and Acquisitions of U.S. Electric Utilities

Regulating Mergers and Acquisitions of U.S. Electric Utilities
Author: Scott Hempling
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. What happens when electric utility monopolies pursue their acquisition interests--undisciplined by competition, and insufficiently disciplined by the regulators responsible for replicating competition? Since the mid-1980s, mergers and acquisitions of U.S. electric utilities have halved the number of local, independent utilities. Mostly debt-financed, these transactions have converted retiree-suitable investments into subsidiaries of geographically scattered conglomerates. Written by one of the U.S.'s leading regulatory thinkers, this book combines legal, accounting, economic and financial analysis of the 30-year march of U.S. electricity mergers with insights from the dynamic field of behavioral economics.

U.S. Utility Mergers and the Restructuring of the New Global Power Industry

U.S. Utility Mergers and the Restructuring of the New Global Power Industry
Author: Edward B. Flowers
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1998-05-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1567201636

Consume thy rival may be the new law of corporate survival in the U.S. utilities industry. This book describes close to $70 billion of global utility mergers stemming from the anticipated deregulation of the U.S. gas and electrical utilities industries. Occurring from 1995 to 1997, these mergers are completely restructuring U.S. power utilities. Thirty-seven billion dollars of these mergers, a full 53 percent, occurred abroad. About two-thirds of the foreign mergers were U.S. takeovers, while the remaining one-third was mergers, defensive and otherwise, of U.K. firms with other U.K. firms. This may be the first time U.S. industrial restructuring has generated more investment abroad rather than in domestic markets. Exploring the diversity of strategies and changes driving these mergers, the author concludes that although complex, the mergers can be explained by strategies traditionally used in domestic M&As. These very large U.S. utilities now consider themselves to be operating in a global industry of private, deregulated utilities, and they are determined to survive through mergers that help them cut costs, spread expenses, and increase profits.

Electric Utility Mergers

Electric Utility Mergers
Author: Mark W. Frankena
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1994-07-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 031338861X

Competition in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity is of increasing interest to policy makers as well as to buyers and sellers of power. The use of competition as a social policy tool to benefit consumers carries the necessity of preserving competition when it is threatened by mergers or other structural changes. The work explains central principles of antitrust economics and applies them to mergers in the electric power industry. This work focuses on mergers, but the economic principles explained here will be useful in analyzing many important issues flowing from growth of competition in electric power. For example, proper definition of markets and analysis of market power will be useful in decisions on whether to continue regulation.

Roll-Up

Roll-Up
Author: Thomas J. Flaherty
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1626349282

The ultimate guide to the ongoing consolidation of the utilities industry ​Roll-Up delves into the rich history of utilities consolidation—from the original, highly fragmented U.S. industry structure, through the development of industry views on consolidation and participation, to the drivers and events occurring in the cycles of the modern era, from 1995–2020. Expert utilities consultant Tom Flaherty interviewed eleven current or former chief executive officers, investment bankers, attorneys, and ratings analysts who provided introspection and commentary on their experiences with consolidation in the modern era. These notable individuals made the tough decisions about whether to pursue a transaction, evaluated the logic of potential combinations, crafted merger agreements, designed the process for successful outcomes, and guided the execution of mergers through the strategy, financing, regulatory, and integration processes. In Roll-Up, Flaherty has combined these interviews of experts in the utilities industry with detailed research and decades of experience to explore topics like • the changing motivations for combinations, • hands-on perspectives of successful transaction execution, • the current nature of business simplification and portfolio rationalization, • what could happen next for utility mergers and acquisitions. Roll-Up covers the past and present of utilities consolidation and looks over the horizon at how future transactions might evolve beyond those historically conducted.

Mergers and Acquisitions as a Response to the Deregulation of the Electric Power Industry

Mergers and Acquisitions as a Response to the Deregulation of the Electric Power Industry
Author: John R. Becker-Blease
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2009
Genre:
ISBN:

As a response to the deregulation of the electric power industry, many electric utilities adopted a strategy of acquiring other electric or gas utilities. We examine whether these merger and acquisition strategies create value for the utility shareholders and whether the strategies result in superior post-merger operating and stock-price performance relative to utilities that did not grow through acquisitions. We find little evidence that the mergers and acquisitions created long-term value for a fully diversified investor. Furthermore, the stock price and operating performance of the acquirers under performed the stock price and operating performance of a control portfolio of utilities that did not engage in merger activity. This under performance was even worse for those utilities that diversified along product/power or geographic lines. We conclude that if efficiencies and synergies were created as a result of deregulation, utilities did not have to grow through merger to capture them. Our findings also suggest that utility regulation did not preclude economically efficient mergers that increased shareholder wealth from taking place prior to deregulation.