EXPERT SPEAKERS

• Bill Tilles, portfolio manager for The Kinetic Utility Funds

• Leonard Hyman, senior financial analyst, economist and policy advisor, RJ Rudden

• Christine Tezak, analyst, Schwab Soundview Washington Research

• Edward Tirello, managing director and senior power strategist, Berenson & Co

You know the events that led the electric and gas marketing firms to lose most of their value or in some cases all their worth.  We all watched as troubled firms and others went back to basics.

FIND OUT ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS

• Now what comes after back-to-basics and have we started the next phase already?

• Will eagerness for growth push utilities towards high level of merger activity?

• Are balance sheets too weak for M&A?

• Leaders and planners now keeping to their knitting are desperately trying to find new ways to grow.  They’re locked into low growth or no growth following back to basics.  Is there a way to grow other than M&A?

• And maybe not having a lot of growth is OK in a low-risk world.

• Since utilities have done well in restructuring and their non-utility subsidiaries have done very poorly on average, how won’t leaders be shy about or even reluctant to seek growth this time around?

• And much, much more.

Restructuring Today assembled a panel of Wall Street specialists to guide you in thinking through your firm's positioning in the post back-to-basics world.

You'll hear their views on this 90-minute audio CD.

MEET THE SPEAKERS

Bill Tilles

Bill Tilles is the Portfolio Manager for The Kinetic Utility Funds.  His primary responsibilities include research direction, development and maintenance of utility modeling techniques as well as oversight of utility trading.
     Previously, he served as the director of research and assistant portfolio manager for the long/short, hedged utility fund at Angelo Gordon, LP from 1998 - 2000.
     Tilles also worked for 8 years on the sell side as senior vice president and head of utility equity eesearch for both Smith Barney (4 years) and Dean Witter Reynolds (4 years).
     Prior to that, he was a utility and telecommunications credit analyst for Standard & Poor's Corp for 4 years.
     Prior to that, he was a regulatory analyst at Regulatory Research Associates for over a year.
     Tilles has held faculty positions at the University of Notre Dame and Loyola University of Chicago.
     He received a Masters Degree in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 1977 and a BA from Queens College, CUNY in 1973.

Leonard Hyman

Leonard Hyman is a Rudden senior financial analyst, economist and policy advisor specializing in public utility finance, strategy, regulation and economics.
     Prior to his affiliation with RJ Rudden Associates, Hyman served in research and analysis roles at Merrill Lynch and Solomon Smith Barney.  After leaving Merrill Lynch in 1994, he acted as a Senior Industry Advisor to Salomon Smith Barney’s Global Power Group, as well as advisor to an international telecommunications firm, to venture capital firms, combination gas and electric companies, and electric transmission entities. Hyman has been affiliated with Rudden since early 2002.
     From 1978 to 1994, as head of the Utility Research Group and first vice president at Merrill Lynch, he supervised and maintained research on foreign and domestic energy and telecommunications utilities.
     He was also a member of privatization team for offerings of British, Spanish, Mexican, Argentine and Brazilian utilities.
     Hyman has testified before Congress and has served on four advisory panels for the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment and for a study undertaken by the National Science Foundation.
     In addition, he was a member of a Pennsylvania State task force on electric utility efficiency, and a NASA task force on fusion and other energy sources.      He served on the advisory board of the Electric Power Research Institute, and serves on advisory boards for EXNET, EnerTech Capital, and Excelergy, and on the editorial board of Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy.
     In 1997, Hyman was member of a blue ribbon task force advising on the reorganization of the North American Electric Reliability Council.
     Hyman was previously part of a team at Salomon Smith Barney that worked extensively on the creation and financing of independent transmission companies.  That work included frequent contacts with FERC commissioners and staff, preparation of testimony for the American Transmission Systems (FirstEnergy) filing at FERC, and a role in Salomon Smith Barney’s team of advisors to Allegheny Energy during the formation of PJMWest.
     Hyman is co-author of America’s Electric Utilities: Past, Present and Future (in its seventh edition), co-author of The New Telecommunications Industry (in its second edition), The Water Business and Unlocking the Benefits of Restructuring: A Blueprint for Transmission and editor of The Privatization of Public Utilities.  He has also contributed to other books and professional journals.
     For more than ten years, Hyman was selected by Institutional Investor magazine as one of the leading research analysts in his field.  He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).  He holds a BA degree from New York University where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and an MA in Industrial Organization with a minor in Latin American Studies from Cornell University.

Christine Tezak

Christine Tezak covers the electricity sector and environmental policy at the Washington Research Group, which provides political, economic and industry research for institutional and corporate investors.
     Tezak has followed environmental policy for seven years and has assumed responsibility for the electric utility sector.  Her environmental background provides a unique perspective as energy and environmental issues continue to converge.  She is a five-term board member, and current Vice President of the Washington, DC-based Women's Council on Energy & the Environment.  She is also a member of the Natural Gas Roundtable. 
     Tezak has been quoted in numerous financial and industry publications and has testified before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the US House of Representatives.
     Prior to joining the Washington Research Group, Tezak was a research associate with HSBC Securities, Inc and with NatWest Securities.
     Tezak received her Bachelor's degree in Russian from Boston College and earned an MBA in Finance from the George Washington University. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa (Boston College) and Beta Gamma Sigma (GWU) honor societies, and winner of the 2001 Bernard Nees Prize in Finance.

Edward J Tirello, Jr

Edward Tirello is managing director and senior power strategist of Berenson & Company's Power and Utilities Group.  He joined Berenson & Co from the Utility Investment Banking Group at Deutsche Bank.  Tirello has spent 32 years of his career as a utility industry research analyst, moving over to the investment banking side as a strategist for the past three years.
     Beginning with his 1987 prediction that the industry would consolidate from 150 companies down to 50 in five years (giving rise to the famous "50 in 5" slogan), Tirello has been frequently quoted in the financial and trade media on macro industry events and trends.  He foresaw the convergence of natural gas and electric distribution companies in the mid-1990s.
     His latest prediction is that two new sectors for growth in the industry will be distribution (with ancillary services leading the way) and transmission (with the formation of a $100 billion plus high voltage transmission industry.)
     Prior to Deutsche Bank, Tirello worked at two of its US acquisitions, BT Alex Brown and NatWest Securities.  Prior to that, he worked for Smith Barney and Lehman Brothers.  He has a BS in Economics from St Peter's College, an MBA in Finance and Marketing from Fairleigh Dickinson University and has completed course work towards a PhD at Penn State.