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To: Hawkmoon who wrote (84864)	1/21/2001 6:52:32 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 95453

Utilities No Longer Safe Haven Saturday January 20 2:43 PM ET By Paul Thomasch and Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fund manager Don Cox left a meeting with Exxon Mobil executives last September shaking his head, knowing he would stay as far away as possible from California utilities. During the meeting in downtown Chicago, four executives from Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM - news), the world's No. 1 energy company, told Cox to expect natural gas prices to fall to just $1 per million British thermal units (mmbtu). His conclusion? Even the industry's top brass couldn't see the coming power crisis, one that would hit California's utilities particularly hard. ``I walked away from that meeting telling my clients to load themselves to the hilt with natural gas stock and don't get involved with the California utilities,'' said Cox, chairman and chief strategist at the Harris Investment Management Fund, which manages $16 billion. It was the right call. Natural gas hit $10 per mmbtu three months later, the last in a chain of events that sent power prices through the roof and sent California's deregulated electricity market to the brink of collapse. Now, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (news - web sites), a unit of San Francisco-based PG&E Corp. (NYSE:PCG - news) and Southern California Edison (news - web sites), a unit of Rosemead, Calif.-based Edison International (NYSE:EIX - news), are flirting with bankruptcy, stock- and bondholders have seen billions of dollars melt away and Wall Street has been forced to reassess utilities as an investment. ``This is going to once and for all eliminate the idea that utilities are a homogenous industry,'' said Cox. ``This is a group that cries out for a whole new sort of analysis.'' Exxon Mobil could neither confirm nor deny the September meeting took place. con't... dailynews.yahoo.com