March 28, 2024

Shaking Pennies and Fists Against Utility Rate Increases

The objections can take creative forms, like the jar of pennies meant to symbolize retiree finances that was sent to Lynn J. Good, chief executive of the Duke Energy Corporation, as a rate-increase protest on her first day of work in July. But she also received a bunch of sunflowers the same day from Greenpeace to encourage the utility to go green, said Tom Williams, a Duke spokesman.

“That shows how goals differ,” Mr. Williams said. “Some advocates want clean energy, and others want cost-effective, and no one wants their rates to go up.”

Many retirees are unswayed by such comments. They are moving away from lower-key activities like attending meetings, passing out fliers or making phone calls to more visible tactics to express displeasure over utility company requests for significant sums to cover everything from installation of smart thermostats to managing trees and vegetation.

At public rate hearings in South Carolina in June, opponents shook Mason jars full of pennies to show their displeasure with Duke’s rate proposals. Several rate protesters in North Carolina staged a skit recently, with one dressed like Rich Uncle Pennybags from the Monopoly board game, outside the state regulator’s office in Raleigh.

In other rate protests, AARP in Arizona gave away Christmas stockings stuffed with lumps of coal, and in Idaho the group awarded three utility companies “turkey” awards for attempts to raise water and electric bills.

AARP began stepping up its efforts against rate increases two years ago, prompted by survey results showing that those 50 and older spend the most, proportionally, of all age groups on electricity, and people over 65 list utility bills as their biggest annual expense. The AARP Public Policy Institute study was based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

AARP’s multistate campaign has spread, with mixed results, to 38 states, as the organization has begun to more assertively seek publicity, campaign and, in some cases, take legal action to protect retiree interests in rate requests. The stakes have risen as utility providers, especially those in areas hit by strong storms, seek revenue to shore up infrastructure and for tree-cutting and other maintenance that may have been deferred in earlier years.

“It’s unfair for utilities to ask for more money to upgrade their operations,” argued Janee Briesemeister, AARP’s senior legislative counsel and utilities expert.

“The company can’t just say, ‘We need money between rate cases, and we’ll tell you later what it’s for,’ ” she said, adding that such requests customarily are part of a rate-making process that differs somewhat state by state, but involves the utility’s providing detailed financial justification.

Mr. Williams of Duke conceded that “there is a need to take the lumpiness out of the rate process,” by spreading out increases over time. But utilities say costs for new plants or environmental upgrades can be recovered in rate increases after the improvements come online; such increases typically involve a settlement after regulators hear from all sides, including retiree protesters.

In South Carolina, AARP adopted the slogan “Raise Your Voice Before They Raise Your Rates,” with the image of the spilled Mason jar, to fight a proposed increase in electricity rates. Campaign materials were sent to 25,000 members by mail and appeared on the Internet and in local newspapers.

The campaign raised attendance at public hearings on a request by Duke Energy for a 16.3 percent increase in monthly residential bills, said Patrick Cobb, AARP state assistant director. The increase would have added nearly $214 to the average yearly bill, according to AARP. Instead, the eventual settlement, not yet completed, will raise rates about 10 percent over two years for the utility’s 540,000 customers.

Even in a state like Arizona, with some 800,000 AARP members, large numbers of retirees do not ensure complete victory. Dressed as Santa Claus, Steve Jennings, AARP’s state advocacy director, used holiday stockings with lumps of coal to urge state regulators to vote against a proposed rate rise. Regulators eventually approved a somewhat smaller increase.

“Getting out there doesn’t mean you are going to win,” Mr. Jennings said, “but it does make you a player.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/business/retirementspecial/shaking-pennies-and-fists-against-utility-rate-increases.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

N.F.L. Pressure Said to Lead ESPN to Quit Film Project

ESPN, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, pays the N.F.L. more than $1 billion a year to broadcast “Monday Night Football,” a ratings juggernaut and cherished source of revenue for Disney.

“Frontline,” the PBS public affairs series, and ESPN had been working for 15 months on a two-part documentary, to be televised in October. But ESPN’s role came under intense pressure by the league, the two people said, after a trailer for the documentary was released Aug. 6, the day that the project was discussed at a Television Critics Association event in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Last week, several high-ranking officials convened a lunch meeting at Patroon, near the league’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters, according to the two people, who requested anonymity because they were prohibited by their superiors from discussing the matter publicly. It was a table for four: Roger Goodell, commissioner of the N.F.L.; Steve Bornstein, president of the NFL Network; John Skipper, ESPN’s president; and John Wildhack, ESPN’s executive vice president for production.

At the combative meeting, the people said, league officials conveyed their displeasure with the direction of the documentary, which is expected to describe a narrative that has been captured in various news reports over the past decade: the league turning a blind eye to evidence that players were sustaining brain trauma on the field that could lead to profound, long-term cognitive disability.

Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the N.F.L., said Friday morning that the lunch meeting was requested by ESPN several weeks ago. “At no time did we formally or informally ask them to divorce themselves from the project,” Aiello said. “We know the movie was happening and the book was happening, and we respond to them as best we can. We deny that we pressured them.”

Chris LaPlaca, an ESPN spokesman, said Thursday that ESPN’s decision was not based on any concerns about hurting its contractual relationship with the N.F.L. Rather, the network said in a statement, it was ending its official association with “Frontline” because it did not have editorial control of what appeared on the public television public affairs series.

But Raney Aronson-Rath, the deputy executive producer of “Frontline,” said that ESPN executives had for more than a year understood the ground rules of the collaboration: “Frontline” would keep editorial control of what it televised or put on its Web sites, and ESPN would have control of everything it televised or posted on the Web.

“We were about to share a cut of our film with them,” Aronson-Rath said, “and we welcomed their input.” But ESPN would not continue with the venture with “Frontline,” which has won 15 Peabody Awards.

Even with ESPN no longer identified as a collaborator on the “Frontline” films, they may retain a clear ESPN flavor because they are heavily based on the reporting of Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada, brothers and investigative reporters for ESPN. They are the authors of a book, “League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth,” set to be published Oct. 8.

The two-part documentary is scheduled to run Oct. 8 and 15.

“We’re obviously disappointed because the partnership has been a phenomenal one, and we don’t totally understand what happened,” Fainaru-Wada said. Referring to ESPN, he added, “Nothing we’ve been told by anybody suggests that they’re backing off on the journalism.”

Aronson-Rath said that until last Friday, there had been no hint of trouble between “Frontline” and ESPN. She said that “Frontline” had worked “in lock step” with Vince Doria, ESPN’s senior vice president and director of news, and Dwayne Bray, senior coordinating producer in ESPN’s news-gathering unit.

But in conversations last Friday and Monday with Doria and Bray, she was first told that ESPN did not want its logo to be connected to the films.

“It didn’t appear that it was their decision,” she said.

Aronson-Rath said that the Fainaru brothers started working with “Frontline” before ESPN was asked to collaborate. “The response we got from them was terrific, and everyone was very excited,” she said.

Brian Stelter, Ken Belson and Richard Sandomir contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/sports/football/nfl-pressure-said-to-prompt-espn-to-quit-film-project.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

DealBook: R.B.S. Faces Doubts About Its Direction

Stephen Hester, chief of the Royal Bank of Scotland.Oli Scarff/Getty ImagesStephen Hester, the departing chief of Royal Bank of Scotland.
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LONDON – After years of restructuring and job cuts, Royal Bank of Scotland again finds itself confronted with an uncertain future.

A day after Stephen Hester, the chief executive, announced he was leaving the bank, investors expressed their displeasure over the surprise move, sending R.B.S. shares down more than 6 percent in trading in London on Thursday.

For many, the departure of Mr. Hester, a former Credit Suisse banker, raised concerns about how R.B.S. would navigate the British government’s planned share sale, which could begin as soon as the second half of next year.

After leading a mistimed acquisition of the Dutch financial giant ABN Amro in 2007, R.B.S. received a multibillion-dollar bailout during the financial crisis, leaving the British government with an 81 percent holding.

The stake, which is managed by the government-owned UK Financial Investments, could take the rest of the decade to offload, and analysts warned that changing R.B.S.’s chief executive could add extra instability to the process.

“This resignation adds to the existing political and regulatory uncertainty surrounding R.B.S.,” Citigroup analysts said in a research note to investors on Thursday. “One should not underestimate the time it will take for the UK Financial Investments to exit from the 81 percent stake.”

Since the financial crisis began, R.B.S. has jettisoned around 900 billion ($1.4 trillion) worth of assets from its balance sheet, and eliminated about 40,000 jobs in a bid to bolster profitability.

The bank says it will now stop selling a number of complicated financial products, including equity derivatives, through its investment banking unit, which has been pared back significantly to reduce exposure to risky trading activity.

The latest restructuring will lead to around 2,000 job cuts, or roughly 17 percent of the unit’s staff, mostly in Asia, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

In a memo to employees, Mr. Hester wrote that when he joined the bank, “we were a company close to the point of collapse with no clear path back to recovery.”

“All the odds and much of the opinion was against us,” he wrote, “but your efforts and strengths proved to be the biggest asset in ensuring we could recover the business for everyone who relied on us.”

The departure of Mr. Hester, 52, by the end of the year will leave the bank without many of its current senior executives ahead of its pending privatization. The bank’s chief financial officer, Bruce Van Saun, an American, will also leave his role at R.B.S. in September to lead the firm’s United States unit, the Citizens Financial Group, ahead of its planned initial public offering in 2015.

Analysts said a number of internal candidates, including the bank’s chief risk officer, Nathan Bostock, and the head of its noncore division, Rory Cullinan, could now be tapped for the top job at R.B.S.

A spokesman for R.B.S. declined to comment, adding that the search for a new chief executive had just begun and would potentially include both internal and external candidates.

R.B.S.’s chairman, Philip Hampton, said Mr. Hester’s departure had been aimed at appointing a new leader who could oversee the privatization process from start to finish.

Whoever takes over, the person must deal with attempts by its largest shareholder, the British government, to jump-start domestic growth by calling on local financial institutions to increase their lending to consumers and companies.

While the taxpayers’ holding is controlled by a separate entity owned by the British government, questions remain about whether R.B.S. can succeed in its restructuring when faced with political pressure over how the bank is run. The bank’s share price is currently around 40 percent below the so-called break-even point where taxpayers would not lose money on the R.B.S. bailout.

“We continue to argue that the political wrangling has significantly impacted the franchise, especially in R.B.S.’s markets business,” Espirito Santo analysts said in a research note on Thursday. “Given the political interference not many will relish the opportunity to run R.B.S.”

Below is a copy of Mr. Hester’s memo to employees:

Dear colleague,

The Board is announcing today that it is starting the search for a new Group Chief Executive of RBS to lead the company through privatisation and beyond. I plan to step down by the end of this year, or earlier if a successor is in place, and to help the company as much as I can in the meantime.

Nothing about this decision was easy, but I can see that as we head towards a potential privatisation, now provides a window for the company to put in place a Chief Executive that can give fresh energy to the challenge of leading RBS through the next phase.

I joined RBS at its lowest point. We were a company close to the point of collapse with no clear path back to recovery. All the odds and much of the opinion was against us, but your efforts and strengths proved to be the biggest asset in ensuring we could recover the business for everyone who relied on us.

Five years is a long time for anyone to serve as Chief Executive. The endless scrutiny we all face carries a cost, but it has always been offset for me by the warmth and support of colleagues from across the business to carry on.

This strength of teamwork is no more evident than in the leadership team that exists in RBS today. It is the strongest such team we could wish for and is well placed to steer the business through the next phase of our journey to become a really good bank.

I’ve been conscious since first taking up this role that the success of RBS should never again be cast in the image of one person. Companies rarely succeed or fail on the actions of individuals, but on the skills and strength of character present in all those who work within them.

I have believed for some time now that the recovery process revealed strength of character in RBS that lay dormant.

In the face of significant challenge, we have proven ourselves as determined and capable people, quietly rebuilding a company that the nation depends on. But more than this, it is now clear to me that RBS is a company of decent, hardworking people who care a lot about doing the right thing for customers.

In the time I have spent with so many of you, I am always heartened when I see the depth of belief you have in doing the best for our customers. It may surprise our critics, but this is often matched by goodwill on the part of the many customers I meet in all parts of our business who truly want us to succeed.

Our future success starts and finishes with this focus on customers. We’ve made it our purpose to serve them well, and if we truly obsess about meeting their needs over our own, then RBS will become a really good bank. We know this to be right, not because we think it is, but because our customers tell us this is what they want.

RBS lost sight of why it was founded, and it nearly died as a result. We’ve got back to a place where we can once again focus on the customer above all else. If there is one positive legacy to take from our past mistakes it must be that we never, ever forget why we are here.

Leading RBS is an exceptional task, only made possible by the fact that I work with exceptional people. Thank you for all your commitment, support and teamwork.

Be sure to continue to serve customers well.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/royal-bank-of-scotland-faces-questions-about-direction/?partner=rss&emc=rss