Word: conning
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...Con Ed stock plunged to $6 a share, and the company gave every appearance of being a financial basket case, rather like the city it served...
After New York's big blackout last week-in many respects a replay of the 1965 power shutdown that darkened eight states in the Northeast-that old Con Ed catharsis began working overtime. Federal, state and local agencies launched investigations of the power failure. Politicians and editorial writers howled over the fact that only three days before the city went dark, Con Ed's $200,000-a-year chairman had said he could "guarantee" that the chances of another blackout were remote. New York Mayor Abraham Beame summarily convicted Con Ed's management of "gross negligence...
...Con Ed really be as poorly run as its detractors say it is? The company has always been a tempting target, partly because of its very size. Besides being New York City's biggest taxpayer ($471 million last year) and second largest private employer (25,371 workers), it operates a vast power system comprising 118,000 miles of overhead and underground wires, cables, gas mains and steam pipes, as well as 15 generating plants and battalions of maintenance crews that seem to be forever tearing up city streets. When Luce was brought in to run the company...
Testy Relations. Luce started off briskly enough. He revamped virtually the entire 55-member top-management team at Con Ed, bringing in many new executives from the outside. He ordered a variety of improvements to reduce chances of future system-wide blackouts, and encouraged natural-gas conservation. To better the company's testy relations with its customers, he scrapped the gratuitous DIG WE MUST signs that work crews used to place at their street excavations, emphasized pollution-control efforts and set up special offices to handle complaints...
...spring of 1974, the whipsaw effect of recession and rising costs-particularly for oil, which fuels 80% of Con Ed's generating capacity-left the company strapped. Realizing that it could not afford to complete its two new generating plants, let alone begin construction at Storm King-even if environmental objections were overcome-Con Ed sold the two plants to the state power authority. Most dramatic of all, the company skipped its regular 450 quarterly dividend. From a high...