News Digest

 

Frontlines

Battle of Dunkirk

 

 

Utilities rush to save their last tenuous hold over the power plants they so smugly sold off.

 

e-Commerce is consolidating, but there's room for the little guys too.

Thomas Edison built the electric utility industry virtually from scratch out of his workshop, so can Internet mavericks do the same for e-commerce? Or has the moment passed for the garage startups, leaving it to the big utilities—or better yet, the large conglomerates and multi-company joint ventures—to attract capital and introduce the new ideas?

 

The Federal Trade Commission likely will regulate those business-to-business Web portals, but how much?

Electric utility executives may be a step behind the Internet revolution, but in one key respect they may have an advantage over anyone else building an e-commerce Web portal for business-to-business (B2B) procurement.

Utility executives don't fear government regulation. They're already caught in the net.

News Digest

 

Frontlines

What's a Utility?

Never before have investors known less about what their company is up to.

How many different types of "utility" companies can you name? Which ones would you trust the most to double or triple your investment nest egg? Which ones make you nervous?