Great Plains Energy Westar Energy

Great Plains Energy Westar Energy, Great Plains Energy Inc. agreed to buy Westar Energy Inc. for $8.6 billion as power companies across the U.S. look to consolidate in the face of weak demand and rising operational costs.

Great Plains will pay $51 per share in cash and $9 per share in stock, and will assume $3.6 billion in Westar’s debt, the companies said Tuesday in a statement. Great Plains Chief Executive Officer Terry Bassham will become chairman and CEO of the combined company, while Westar CEO Mark Ruelle will remain in his current role until the deal closes, which is expected in the spring of 2017.

The transaction comes amid a boom in utility mergers and acquisitions as customers using more energy-efficient appliances and resources such as rooftop solar flatten electricity demand. There were more than $52 billion worth of utility deals pending or completed across the U.S. last year, the most since 2011, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“The challenge obviously is that Westar is a bigger company than Great Plains so they are biting off a mouthful,” said Tim Winter, utility analyst with Gabelli & Co. in St. Louis. Financing will be a “manageable challenge,” but given the size of the deal “my assumption is they are going to have to issue more stock.”

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which is advising Great Plains, will provide about $8 billion of debt financing for the deal, according to the statement. Guggenheim Securities is serving as Westar’s adviser. Pension fund Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System will make a $750 million mandatory preferred convertible equity investment in the company once the deal closes, according to the statement.

Financial Investor
Kansas City-based Great Plains had been seeking to partner with a financial investor to help raise the cash necessary to buy its larger rival, a person familiar with the matter said earlier this month. Great Plains has a value of about $4.8 billion compared with Westar, the biggest utility in Kansas, worth about $7.5 billion. Great Plains has about 838,000 customers in Missouri and Kansas, according to the company’s website.

The addition of Westar’s generation fleet will give Great Plains customers more options to manage the impacts of future regulations on carbon dioxide emissions, according to the statement. The combined company will have one of the largest portfolios of wind generation in the U.S.

“The utility industry is facing rising customer expectations, increasing environmental standards and emerging cyber security threats,” Bassham said in the statement. “These factors, coupled with slower demand growth for electricity, are driving our costs and customer rates higher.”

Regulatory Approvals
Great Plains fell 7.6 percent to $28.66 at 9:40 a.m. in New York. Topeka, Kansas-based Westar was up 6.5 percent to $56.35.

Westar delivers power to about 700,000 customers in Kansas and owns power plants capable of producing about 7,000 megawatts, according to the company’s website. It operates in a single state so regulatory approvals may not be as complicated to obtain as they have been for utility deals involving several jurisdictions.

The companies expect to seek approval for the deal with the Kansas Corporation Commission and other regulatory entities during June and July. Great Plains Energy and Westar will seek shareholder approvals later this year. The transaction is subject to approvals from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Regulators “may express some concerns about concentration within the KCP&L – Westar service territories, but are unlikely to block the transaction on that basis alone,” Katie Bays, an analyst with investment firm Height LLC, said in a research note Tuesday.

Debt Financing
Great Plains expects the accord to be neutral to earnings-per-share in the first full calendar year of operations and “significantly accretive” after that, according to the statement.

Westar had also drawn interest from Ameren Corp. and an investor group that includes Borealis Infrastructure Management Inc. and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, people familiar with the matter said last month, asking not to be identified because the information wasn’t public.

“Due to a number of factors including conservation, more efficient appliances, and distributed generation electric usage growth is at a historical low,” said Jaimin Patel, senior credit analyst With Bloomberg Intelligence in Skillman, New Jersey. Growth is “more likely to come through these kinds of deals and acquisitions.”

Boy Abandoned In Woods

Boy Abandoned In Woods, Searchers combed a forest in Japan on Tuesday for a missing seven-year-old boy with no clues about his fate as social media erupted in anger towards his parents who said they abandoned him by a road as punishment for being naughty.

Police on horseback were among 130 rescuers scouring a mountainous area of the northernmost island of Hokkaido from dawn for Yamato Tanooka, who went missing on Saturday.

His parents first said he had disappeared while the family foraged for edible plants. They later told police they had left him by the road to discipline him after he threw stones at people and cars.

They said they drove about 500 metres (yards) down the road but when they went back a few minutes later he had disappeared.

The area is so remote that residents of the region say they rarely go through it.

“We have done an unforgivable thing to our child, and we have caused a lot of trouble for everyone,” Yamato’s father, Takayuki Tanooka, told television reporters.

“I just hope he is safe.”

Cincinnati Zoo Gorilla Killed

Cincinnati Zoo Gorilla Killed, “Parent shaming, or witch hunt on social media?” wondered the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Social media turns ugly after zoo episode.”

That about summed it up Monday.

Days after her 4-year-old son plummeted 20 feet into the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla exhibit, after animal rights activists blamed her alleged poor parenting for the death of a beloved, endangered ape named Harambe, then called on child protective services to investigate her, the boy’s mother became the Internet’s most reviled mom.

Authorities have not yet released the name of the toddler who tumbled into the Gorilla World exhibit Saturday afternoon, nor have they identified his parents. But the Internet doesn’t care about these sorts of formalities.

A mob of online parenting critics mobilized over the holiday weekend, lambasting a nameless figure they were convinced had neglected her child inside the zoo Saturday and was to blame for the events that transpired. Then on Sunday, a woman claiming to be the toddler’s mother took to Facebook in a desperate attempt to defend herself.

“God protected my child until the authorities were able to get to him. My son is safe and was able to walk away with a concussion and a few scrapes … no broken bones or internal injuries,” the woman wrote on Facebook, according to People magazine. “As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kids.”

She added: “Accidents happen …”

‘Fat Leonard’ Navy Scandal

‘Fat Leonard’ Navy Scandal, Three current and former U.S. Navy officers appeared in federal court on Friday to face charges that they secretly worked on behalf of foreign defense contractor Glenn “Fat Leonard” Francis to advance the interests of his company, including instances in which a highly influential captain allowed Francis to ghostwrite official Navy documents and correspondence and submit them as his own.

In exchange, Francis plied the now-retired Capt. Michael Brooks, of Fairfax Station, Virginia, with prostitutes, luxury travel, a days-long party in a presidential suite and other gifts, according to authorities.

Also charged this week in the massive bribery and fraud scheme were Cmdr. Bobby Pitts, of Chesapeake, Virginia, and Lt. Cmdr. Gentry Debord, who is based in Singapore.

The charging documents allege that in return for lavish entertainment and travel expenses, the services of prostitutes and other illicit gifts, the defendants brazenly used their public offices to foist benefit after benefit upon Francis and Glenn Defense Marine Asia, including passing on sensitive internal U.S. Navy information to advance GDMA’s business interests and advocating for GDMA at every turn.

Brooks, 57, and Debord, 47, were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bribery; Pitts, also 47, was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and two counts of obstruction of official proceedings. All of the charges relate to the defendants’ interactions with Francis, the former CEO of Glenn Defense Marine Asia, a defense contracting firm based in Singapore with a decades-long relationship with the U.S. Navy.

Brooks and Pitts made their initial appearance Friday in federal court in Virginia. Debord appeared in federal court in San Diego.

According to an indictment, from June 2006 to July 2008, Brooks served as the U.S. Naval Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines. In that position, Brooks served as the representative of the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the United Forces of the United States in Manila and also as the military advisor to the United States Ambassador.

The indictment alleges that in exchange for travel and entertainment expenses, hotel rooms and the services of prostitutes – which Brooks and Francis referred to in code as “chocolate” or “mocha shakes” or “high tea” – Brooks used his office to benefit GDMA and Francis.

According to the indictment, Brooks secured quarterly diplomatic clearances for GDMA vessels, which allowed GDMA vessels to transit into and out of the Philippines under the diplomatic imprimatur of the U.S. Embassy; he limited the amount of custom fees and taxes that GDMA was required to pay in the Philippines; and enabled GDMA to avoid inspection of any quantity or type of cargo that it transported.

Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid

Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid, When a catastrophic asteroid hit the planet 66 million years ago, scientists believed that creatures in what we now call the South Pole fared pretty well.

But a new analysis suggests that the dinosaur-killing asteroid also annihilated many marine animals in Antarctica.

Scientists at the University of Leeds and the British Antarctic Survey on Seymour Island in the Antarctic Peninsula recently completed testing to determine the age of more than 6,000 marine fossils. They dated from 65 to 69 million years ago — meaning the creatures died around the same time a powerful asteroid struck Earth.

The research, published in the journal of Nature Communications on Thursday, is giving scientists more insight into one of the greatest mass extinctions on the planet.

This is the first study to argue that the mass die-off that happened at the end of the Cretaceous Period was as rapid and devastating not only around the world, but also at the Earth’s polar regions, according to a statement by the University of Leeds.

Originally, scientists believed that animals in the polar regions were far enough away from the source of the mass extinction to be harmed.

However, new data reveals there was about a 70% reduction of the animal population in Antarctica 66 million years ago, meaning the deaths of these creatures was sudden and widespread.

“Our research essentially shows that one day everything was fine — the Antarctic had a thriving and diverse marine community — and the next, it wasn’t,” said James Witts, lead author of the study and a doctorate student at the University of Leeds.

“Clearly, a very sudden and catastrophic event had occurred on Earth,” he said.

In addition, the new fossil evidence solidifies the case that the dinosaurs died because of an asteroid plunging into the Gulf of Mexico, rather than environmental changes due to volcanic activity.

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