Exelon's next deal? The spinoff of its nuclear fleet

[bananas]

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140501/BLOGS10/140509964

Exelon's next deal? The spinoff of its nuclear fleet
Joe Cahill
May 02, 2014

A hardened cold warrior thawed U.S. relations with China. A pain-feeling Democrat ended welfare as we knew it.

And a nuclear engineer just set the stage for Exelon Corp. to exit the nuclear power business.

CEO Christopher Crane's agreement this week to acquire Washington's Pepco Holdings Inc. for $6.8 billion would shift Exelon's center of gravity decisively toward regulated utility operations, and away from the fleet of nuclear power plants that has been the centerpiece of company strategy for the better part of two decades under Mr. Crane and predecessor John Rowe. If the Pepco acquisition proceeds as planned, Exelon would get well over half its profit from utility ratepayers in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland and the District of Columbia. A far smaller share will come from nuclear operations that once generated as much as two-thirds of corporate earnings.

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His deal for Pepco all but assures Exelon eventually will sell or spin off its nuclear unit.

Acquiring utility-focused Pepco will reduce power generation to a sideshow at Exelon. Investors sizing up the company will consider nuclear operations an unpredictable outlier and a drag on earnings from the utility business.

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[RobertEarl]

1. Sell off the nuke plants?

Wise business decision.

Sell the plants to some made up company who borrows all the money to buy the ticking time bombs and then when the plants blow up, the company files bankruptcy and the government picks up the clean-up tab, leaving exelon free and clear of responsibility.

Just might work.

Privatize the profits, socialize the costs. Smart capitalism works that way.