Do Trading and Power Operations Mix? The Case of Constellation Energy Group 2008

John E. Parsons

Working Papers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research

Abstract: Constellation Energy has been a leading performer in the merchant power business since 2001. In addition to its legacy utility, Baltimore Gas and Electric, Constellation is a merchant generator and a wholesale power marketer serving the load of utilities as well as industrial, commercial and retail customers. Constellation has developed sophisticated risk management capabilities and a large trading operation in electric power and related commodities. In a recent reorganization, Constellation gave its trading operations greater organizational independence and prominence. It also increased the scale of its proprietary trading, and used its trading operation as the tool for expanded investments into upstream natural gas and coal and international freight. In August and September of 2008, Constellation experienced a major liquidity crisis that saw its stock price fall by nearly three-quarters. In an emergency search for cash, it was forced to agree to sell itself at the low price. This paper reviews Constellation’s history and the specific events precipitating its liquidity crisis. It then places Constellation’s strategy vis-à-vis its commodity trading operations in the context of the larger history of commodity trading operations and discusses the key financial and strategic questions posed by Constellation’s crisis.

Date: 2008-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://tisiphone.mit.edu/RePEc/mee/wpaper/2008-014.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to tisiphone.mit.edu:80 (nodename nor servname provided, or not known)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mee:wpaper:0814

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sharmila Ganguly ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).