PUC takes up MP merger on Thursday
Agenda Item No. 1 on the calendar for the Thursday state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) meeting reads,
In the Matter of the Petition of Minnesota Power for Acquisition of ALLETE by Canada
Pension Plan Investment Board and Global Infrastructure Partners.
Allete is the Duluth-based holding company that owns the Duluth-based electric utility Minnesota Power (MP). Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP, for short) is a fund owned by the financial behemoth BlackRock.
Approval/disapproval of the merger is the only item on the Thursday agenda. The event will be live streamed, if you care to watch yourself. The meeting is scheduled to continue on Thursday, October 2.
The utility and other supporters of the deal point to the need to raise billions-of-dollars in new capital to fund efforts to comply with the state’s draconian 100-percent-renewable-energy mandate by 2040.
Opponents of the deal point to, well, BlackRock itself. MP provides power for about 150,000 customers, including some of the state’s largest industrial concerns.
The stakes involved are reflected in the staff Briefing Papers compiled for the five commissioners to consider. The PDF of the papers runs some 129 pages. That’s the brief.
In advance of the meeting, each of the five commissioners has put forward their own individual decision options. If adopted, each set of options would apply only if the overall deal is approved by a majority vote of commissioners.
I guess will find out on soon which additional conditions the companies are willing to entertain in exchange for deal approval.
These commissioner decision options supplement the 22 options included in the staff briefing papers (ignoring subparts). Decision option #6 (p. 124) is to reject the transaction outright. This option is backed by several consumer- and environmental-protection groups.
Last week, the Minnesota Reformer published an opinion piece urging rejection of the deal,
PUC must unplug Minnesota Power’s pending sale to world’s largest private equity firm
Stay tuned!