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Strategies & Market Trends : Zeev's Turnips - No Politics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LTK007 who wrote (81883)	6/20/2002 6:07:00 AM
From: LTK007	Respond to of 99280

Dynegy CFO Steps Down Less Tha By PAM EASTON Associated Press Writer Thursday June 20, 6:03 am Eastern Time Dynegy CFO rob Doty Steps Down Less Than a Month After CEO Leaves Company HOUSTON (AP) -- There's more turmoil at Dynegy Inc. The energy trader is laying off 340 employees and has lost another top executive -- its chief financial officer -- as the company restructures itself in the wake of a plummeting stock price and questions about its trading practices. ADVERTISEMENT Rob Doty stepped down Wednesday as Houston-based Dynegy's CFO and executive vice president. Former Dynegy chief executive and co-founder, Chuck Watson, left the company last month. The company said Wednesday it has appointed the president of its energy marketing division, Louis Dorey, to replace Doty. Besides being in charge of the company's wholesale power and gas marketing and origination businesses, Dorey worked as an executive vice president of strategy and planning for Dynegy Marketing and Trade. He joined the company in 1997. "Dynegy should be doing all the right things to ensure its survival and recovery from all the media storm and the rating challenges that have blown through its front door," said John Olson, an analyst with Sanders Morris Harris. "I think it is a natural transition in motion and a changing of the guard that comes when you have a new, different management style." "To my knowledge, there are no issues or agendas that were in conflict here," he said. Dynegy said the layoffs and a new CFO would allow it to improve its financial position, strengthen its balance sheet and improve its credit profile. "Our business environment calls for a different set of skills as we address the changes in our industry," said Dynegy's interim chief executive, Dan Dienstbier. "Louis has a unique combination of commercial and financial knowledge and experience that will serve Dynegy and its stakeholders well." A majority of Wednesday's layoffs were in Houston, where 300 employees received pink slips. The job cuts, which included 50 employees from the company's trading business, should result in $35 million in annual savings, the company said. "Dynegy has always been an efficient organization, especially from a work force standpoint," Dienstbier said. "Nevertheless, the new business environment in the merchant energy sector requires that we pare down certain businesses, such as power trading, and adjust accordingly in order to position the company for long-term, sustainable profitability." Olson said other companies have released their entire energy trading work force, so he was pleased to hear Dynegy was only cutting 50 people. "That's a light reduction," he said. The moves sent shares of Dynegy tumbling. Shares fell 99 cents, or 11 percent, to $7.71 on the New York Stock Exchange. Watson stepped down on May 28 as the company's stock price spiraled downward amid questions of possible sham trades. In the last 52-week period Dynegy's stock has traded at a high of $49.53 and a low of $6.70. Turmoil has spread through the energy-trading industry since Enron Corp. collapsed into bankruptcy last year. Dynegy tried to buy Enron last fall for $9 billion but abandoned the deal as Enron's tangle of partnerships began to unravel, although Dynegy claimed rights to Enron's most valuable asset, the Northern Natural Gas pipeline, as compensation for $1.5 billion it pumped into the failing rival. Dynegy disclosed last month that the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking into trades made by the company last fall. Dynegy said it conducted the trades to test its system and that they didn't yield any profits for Dynegy or its trading partner. The SEC office is also investigating one of Dynegy's natural gas contracts. That contract provided an $80 million tax benefit in 2001 and resulted in about $300 million in net cash flow during 2001. ------

To: LTK007 who wrote (81883)	6/20/2002 8:23:26 AM
From: Chispas	Respond to of 99280

From Steve Saville in Hong Kong this AM... (He has a subscription service, so this is "stealing" <g>): ____________________________________________________________ "Unless bonds do something we absolutely do not expect and move above last year's peak, the recent recovery in the money supply growth rate will be short-lived and its overall downtrend will persist. However, we should be on the lookout for another ferocious liquidity-induced rally in the stock market beginning from whatever low is reached over the next few weeks." ____________________________________________________________ Max, have a great week, this week, EVERY week!