Kansas City Power & Light

KCP&L, UtiliCorp Fight Hostile Takeover

Kansas City Power & Light Co. (KCPL) and UtiliCorp United Inc. (UU), which announced plans to merge on January 22, have amended their merger agreement in response to a hostile takeover attempt by Western Resources, Inc. The revised terms create a new KCPL subsidiary, which would be merged into UU. The resulting company would then be merged with KCPL to form the combined company. UU shareholders would receive one share in the merged company for each UU share held. KCPL shareholders would continue to hold their existing KCPL shares.

Financial News

In April, Texas Utilities announced that it would buy ENSERCH, Western Resources launched a hostile takeover bid for Kansas City Power & Light, and The Southern Co. initiated its ultimately futile bid for the United Kingdom's National Power. Eight other pending mergers involving major electric utilities have been announced during the last year. Utility managements clearly believe their future success requires merging with other utilities.

Consumers: Cost or Benefit?

s Cherry Picking

"If we ignore history, we're doomed to repeat it. And what happened in the natural gas industry is precisely what will happen. The FERC authorized deregulation of the natural gas industry and, as a consequence, today's retail consumers (em meaning residential retail consumers (em are paying more than twice as much for natural gas as the large industrial users.

Joules

Batavia, IL, (pop. 20,300) is studying a municipal broadband communications system that would provide high-speed data services for city businesses, homes, schools, and other customers. The system envisioned by city fathers would use a fiber-optic network extension of the municipal utility. The system would provide cable TV and telephone services, and provide a conduit for interactive data such as the Internet.

FERC Signals Flexibility on Open-Acces Problems

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved a series of orders clarifying that it will not deny or revoke market-based, wholesale electric rates for utilities or their marketing affiliates without first allowing them to correct defects in their open-access transmission tariffs (Docket Nos. ER94-1045-000 et al., Feb. 14, 1996).

Utilities with existing market-based rates (or affiliates with such rates) will have 15 days to refine their open-access tariffs after the FERC identifies a problem (em only then will market-based rates be revoked.

KCPL and UtilCorp Take the Merger Plunge

Kansas City Power & Light Co. (KCPL) and UtiliCorp United have propose to merge in a stock transaction valued at about $3 billion. Like MidAmerican before them, the utilities are calling the deal a "merger of equals" that will result in a company with about $6.4 billion in assets and about 2.2 million customers.

KCPL shareholders will receive one share of stock for each share of KCPL common stock; holders of UtiliCorp common stock will receive 1.096 shares. There are about 62 million shares of KCPL common stock and 46 million shares of UtiliCorp common stock outstanding.

Deconstructing the Information Superhighway: A Map for Utilities

Analysts may tout the coming "convergence" of communications technologies, but the real trend is "divergence."

No subject in recent memory has received as much media attention as the "Information Superhighway". But exactly what it is remains curiously unclear. The Internet? Wireless personal communications services (PCS)? Interactive fiber-optic cable to the home? The Infobahn is all of these and more.

FERC OKs Resale Price Caps in Comparability Case

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has conditionally approved an open-access transmission tariff that contains a price cap in the secondary market for Kansas City Power & Light Co. (KCPL), marking the second settlement of a comparability tariff filing (Docket Nos. ER94-1045-000 et al.).

Perspective

For almost a decade now, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has pursued the goal of promoting competition in bulk-power markets, focusing on access to transmission as its primary tool to achieve that end. This trend first emerged in the 1987 PacifiCorp merger case. It gained momentum with the strong message sent by the Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct).