Mary Potter
Tuesday, June 5, 2012 5:07 pm
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(Clinton, KY, June 5, 2012) - Clinton and Middlesboro water customers are once again on the sales block. A Canadian based company, Corix Infrastructure, Inc., filed an application on April 9th with the Kentucky Public Service Commission to buy Utilities, Inc. from co- owners Highstar Capital II Prism Fund L. P. (29.8%), Highstar Capital Fund II, L. P. (43.87%), Hydro Star Interco LLC (8.40%) and American General Life Insurance Company (17.86%).
The present owners wholly own Hydro Star, LLC which wholly owns Hydro Star Holdings Corporation which wholly owns Utilities, Inc. which wholly owns Water Service Corporation of Kentucky, the company that wholly owns water service for almost 8000 Kentuckians in opposite ends of the state.
The sale – that was reported on industry websites in February – is now up for approval by the Kentucky PSC. No price is revealed in the filings, but an article in Global Water Intelligences on line speculated that Utilities Inc. must have gotten for close to its asking price of $500 million dollars.
Utilities Inc has a pending appeal from its last rate increase PSC case that is pending before Judge Thomas Wingate in Franklin Circuit Court. The company didn’t get the 21% it requested of the PSC after it ran into stiff resistance from customers and local officials. There appears to be little activity in the case since February. When reached by phone, Hickman County Attorney Sue Ellen Morris, who represents Hickman County Fiscal Court in the court case, didn't know the company had been sold.
The Kentucky Attorney General has already received permission to intervene in the deliberations of the PSC whether to allow the sale or not. Filings by buyer and seller promise no changes to service to its customers. The case can be found in http://PSC.KY.gov in the electronic filings section, number 12-00133