Liam Denning, Columnist

California Shouldn’t Waste a PG&E Bankruptcy

This is a chance a make its power system safe, efficient and sustainable.

January 17, 2019 at 1:45 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Don’t let this chance go down the drain, California.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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It’s rare for a utility to go bankrupt, especially twice. For PG&E Corp., which may enter Chapter 11 by the end of the month, there are compelling reasons to do it anyway — and not just for the utility itself.

PG&E, facing perhaps $30 billion or more of claims and penalties, has started the clock ticking even before the last of its cash runs out. One look at its stock — trading at a princely 0.17 times book value — tells you it has lost the confidence of public markets. That rather undercuts the whole point of being an investor-owned utility.