Exelon Fires Another Round (EXC, NRG, RRI)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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money-stack-image43Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC) has filed its preliminary proxy statement for the 2009 annual meeting of NRG Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NRG). NRG still hasn’t scheduled the meeting, but Delaware law requires that the meeting be scheduled within 13 months of NRG’s last annual meeting, which was held on June 14, 2008.

Just to review: Exelon made an offer of $6.2 billion for NRG in October 2008. NRG twice rejected the offer as too low. Exelon went straight to shareholders, and received tenders for 51% of NRG shares in February. NRG offered to buy the retail business of Reliant Energy Inc. (NYSE:RRI) for $287.5 million earlier this month.

In the proxy filing, Exelon proposed a slate of candidates for the four open director seats on NRG’s board, an expansion of NRG’s board from 12 to 19 members, nominees for five of the seven new board seats, and repeal of bylaws adopted by NRG after February 26, 2009, without shareholder approval. So far, NRG has not issued any response.

Exelon is offering NRG shareholders a financially sound new owner and solid, stable cash flow. For its part, NRG management is offering shareholders a retail business in Texas that posted a negative cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2008. Which looks like a better deal?

Paul Ausick
March 18, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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