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New York City utility Consolidated Edison will likely tap the equity capital markets late this year or early in 2003 to fund up to $500 million in infrastructure spending and $400 million in disaster recovery spending stemming from the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks, according to utility analysts.

Inspired by the rise, fall and redemption narrative arc of VH1's Behind the Music, San Francisco illustrator Don Asmussen has written and directed a spoof animated version of the show called Enron: Facing the Music. "It was like a huge rock story that went wrong," he says.

Royal Bank of Scotland will launch syndication this week of a GBP260-270 million non-recourse loan it arranged for Conoco Global Power in January (PFR, 2/3), say bankers. Initially RBoS is looking for a small handful of banks to submit at the arranger/sub-underwriter level and will then look to launch general syndication early in the second quarter, notes one banker. Both KBC Bank and Credit Lyonnais are looking at the high-level tickets say bankers. Officials at both firms declined to comment.

The time-intensive process of agreeing and signing new master trading agreements and getting credit approval to trade means the success of UBS Warburg Energy, the venture formed from EnronOnline, may not become clear until the late summer. UBS, which launched UBSWenergy.com Feb. 11 with the statement the site was open for trading, has talked in terms of a 60-90 day timeline before a sense of the likely success of the operation becomes clear. But, power trading officials say it may take longer because of the time involved in sorting out the legal and credit arrangements.

XL Capital Assurance recently credit wrapped two bond deals Down Under, marking its first move in to the Australasian power market. The credit guarantees allowed BBB+ rated Meridian Energy, a Wellington, New Zealand-based generator and retailer, to juice up the rating on two bond deals to triple-A. Meridian recently tapped the fixed-income mart with a NZD50 million ($21 million) offering of seven-year notes and a AUD100 million ($51.5 million) 10-year deal.

The Inter-American Development Bank and Bank of America launched a $173 million loan on Feb. 22 to finance the bulk of a $205 million 187 MW gas-fired power project, dubbed Thermo Bahia, in Brazil's state of Bahia. According to an investment officer at the IDB in Washington, the project developers, which include ABB Equity Ventures, Petrobras and A&A Electricity Investment Ltd, will provide the remaining financing as equity capital.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, the parent of Des Moines, Iowa-based MidAmerican Energy Holdings, is planning to acquire another utility in the Midwest to take advantage of depressed asset prices and broaden its presence in the region. An official who is advising the Sage of Omaha's investment vehicle on the strategy says, "It's a shrewd move on Berkshire's part because it could snap up a utility right now [on the] cheap. The Enron situation has made it difficult for companies in the sector to get a hold of capital and since Berkshire has a lot of capital, it's a win-win situation." Officials at Berkshire did not return phone calls by press time.

The collapse in IPP stock prices has been driven and exacerbated by the departure of momentum focused investors, which in turn has left stock valuations well below fair value, argue bullish market commentators. "When the hi-tech [sector] lost momentum, its investors moved into power. But this has never been a huge growth story and that was the wrong selling message [to those investors]," says one senior banker, who thinks the sell-off in companies such as Calpine and AES has been over done.

Arlington, Va.-based AES has selected Morgan Stanley to advise on the sale of its Latin American assets, which account for approximately 39% of the international power producers' revenues, says a banker familiar with the matter. At the end of February, AES announced a restructuring plan that included divesting between $1-1.5 billion of underperforming assets in both Latin America and the U.S. It is looking to sell generation capacity to shore up its balance sheet and improve its credit ratings in the wake of the Enron meltdown, which has caused an abrupt downturn in the energy sector.

CMS Energy has signed a deal to sell the bulk of its Latin American electricity assets and expects closure to occur within two weeks, according to an official familiar with the divestiture process. Kelly Farr, a spokesman at Dearborn, Mich.-based CMS, declined to comment on the matter.