Download or read book Regulating Mergers and Acquisitions of U.S. Electric Utilities: Industry Concentration and Corporate Complication written by Scott Hempling and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-30 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.