Hydro One Ltd. formally called off its planned $4.4-billion takeover of Avista Corp. on Wednesday and will pay the U.S. utility a US$103-million termination fee for a deal that failed due to perceived political interference from Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government.
| The decision to kill the takeover ends a U.S. expansion strategy championed by former Hydro One chief executive Mayo Schmidt, who struck an agreement to buy Spokane, Wash.-based Avista in the summer of 2017. The takeover required approval from regulators in states such as Washington and Idaho, where Avista runs electricity and natural gas transmission networks. As part of the transaction, Hydro One agreed to pay Avista a predetermined fee if the deal did not close by March, 2019, to cover legal and investment banking expenses and the opportunity costs that come with a failed transaction.
| The two companies, which together would have had two million customers and ranked among the 20 largest North American utilities, said Wednesday that they “mutually agreed” to call off their merger. Paul Dobson, acting president and CEO of Hydro One, said in a news release: “Hydro One’s Board, management and employees remain focused on delivering safe and reliable power, providing exceptional customer service and driving shareholder value.”
|  | | | More stories below advertisement | | | | Michael Babad's Business Briefing | | | | One of the ironies (and there are many) of the U.S. government shutdown is that we’re pretty sure it’s having a serious economic impact – but the people whose job it is to measure that impact aren’t at work. Because they work for the government. Which is shut down.
| As President Donald Trump’s impasse with Congress over funding for his border wall drags into its second month, one of its notable casualties of the resulting shutdown has been the usual flow of key government-administered data on the U.S. economy. The empty statistical pit that is normally filled with important, carefully scrutinized facts and figures is getting deeper by the week.
| This is no small matter for the many experts who track the economy – and not just in the United States, but in Canada, too. For the central banks on both sides of the border who have stressed that their path of interest rate increases has become highly “data dependent,” the shutdown could soon become a serious impediment to rate policy.
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