NextEra Energy Inc. is in talks aimed at saving its acquisition of Oncor, one of the country’s largest electricity transmissions businesses, after Texas regulators rejected the deal, lawyers told a bankruptcy judge yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Texas’ Public Utility Commission last week blocked NextEra’s proposed takeover as a transaction not in the public interest. The “no” from regulators upset not only NextEra’s $18.4 billion transaction but also the drive to wrap up one of the largest bankruptcy proceedings on record, the $42 billion bankruptcy of Energy Future Holdings Corp., which owns most of Oncor. A bankruptcy-exit plan confirmed earlier this year for Energy Future is built around the sale of Oncor to NextEra. Now NextEra is “exploring every alternative and action to try to resuscitate the deal,” Howard Seife, lawyer for NextEra, said yesterday at a bankruptcy court hearing.
