Energy Future Holdings Corp. will likely abandon the $18 billion sale of its Oncor power transmission company to an investor group led by Dallas billionaire Ray Hunt, the bankrupt power goliath told a bankruptcy judge Thursday and the Dallas Business Journal reported today. The deal was supposed to be Energy Future Holdings’ ticket out of bankruptcy court, where the case has lingered for two years at a cost to EFH estimated at $1 million a day in legal fees. The sale of Oncor could die within weeks unless the Texas Public Utility Commission reconsiders conditions the commission placed on the deal in March. In mid-April, Hunt and the group of proposed investors asked the PUC for a new hearing, saying the commission’s restrictions made the deal unprofitable and saying they couldn’t close the deal unless the PUC loosened them. Energy Future had hoped that the sale of Oncor would provide the cash to appease creditors and hasten the end of bankruptcy proceedings. Energy Future lawyer Marc Kieselstein of Kirkland & Ellis LLP told a bankruptcy judge in Delaware that the company is choosing an alternate route for exiting bankruptcy because of talks with investors that make it clear the deal is dead. “This is not the outcome anyone wished for or hoped for,” he said. Hunt Consolidated Inc., which is still trying to save the deal, gained the backing on Wednesday from powerful business leaders, including Ross Perot Jr., former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and real estate magnate Roger Staubach.
