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.

Energy Antitrust Handbook

Energy Antitrust Handbook
Author: Donald E. Hardy
Publisher: American Bar Association
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2002
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781590311233

The Energy Antitrust Handbook presents a guide to an industry of increasing importance to the U.S. economy. The Handbook is designed to assist energy, regulatory, and antitrust lawyers in understanding the multilayered complexity of this field. Historically, energy has been at the center of the development of the antitrust laws. The oil industry, for example, has been the source of many seminal antitrust cases, while the electric and natural gas industries were considered to be the province of regulation. However, competition began to enter these two industries and develop particularly in the late 1980s and 1990s. This book provides a basic background of the history and economic structure of electricity and gas and the applicable regulatory structure. In addition, it explains the application of antitrust laws to these industries both by the courts and the agencies, particularly the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The Energy Antitrust Handbook also offers insight on how the past may be a prologue for issues that are currently in flux and reflects the greater attention being given to electricity issues by the courts and federal agencies.Lawyers familiar with antitrust will gain an understanding of gas and electricity product issues, the market structure, and the unique application of the antitrust laws to these industries. Lawyers and executives familiar with these industries but not with antitrust law will find this book provides both basic as well as pervasive coverage of the antitrust laws applicable to energy.

Competition Policy and Merger Analysis in Deregulated and Newly Competitive Industries

Competition Policy and Merger Analysis in Deregulated and Newly Competitive Industries
Author: Peter C. Carstensen
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 184844382X

The thorough analyses presented in the book provide the reader with a good overview of the deregulation process in the respective industries. . . Competition Policy and Merger Analysis in Deregulated and Newly Competitive Industries is a valuable resource for researchers of law, economics, and political science. . . Volker Soyez, European Competition Law Review This comprehensive book contains case studies on the evolution of competition policy, with an emphasis on merger policy, for seven major US industries that have experienced substantial deregulation in the past forty years electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railroads, airlines, hospitals and banking. Also included is a comparison of the EU s experience in attempting to bring about competition in the energy, finance, and airline industries. The contributors to the volume, each a recognized expert on the industry examined, explore the positive and negative implications of the substitution of market-oriented processes for historic patterns of command and control regulation. The chapters reveal clear similarities in the economic, legal and public policy issues that have arisen following deregulation of these economic sectors. Together they provide a good basis to discern the consistency of the problems and the relative success of differing responses to these issues over a range of industries going through similar transformation. While taking a basically positive view of the movement away from direct regulation, the contributors identify a number of continuing problems with achieving workable competition in these industries. The thorough analyses presented here will be of great value to law, economics, and political science researchers interested in deregulation, economic consultants advising government agencies or private parties, attorneys who focus on deregulated industries, policy planners at the agencies overseeing these industries, and students in advanced seminars on economic regulation.

Electricity Regulation

Electricity Regulation
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Commerce. Subcommittee on Energy and Power
Publisher:
Total Pages: 206
Release: 1996
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

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.