Company History
The Public Utility Holding Company Act
Samuel Insull was Thomas Edison’s business secretary. He moved to Chicago to
build a multilevel utility organization that included holding companies, which
held other holding companies. The profit-taking opportunities inherent in his
pyramid scheme set off a national acquisition craze. By 1932 there were eight
holding companies controlling 73 percent of the investor-owned electric
business. The scheme collapsed and public outcry produced the Public Utility
Holding Company Act of 1935.
PUHCA broke up the multilevel holding companies and required them to register
with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The companies were required
to specialize in one service and relinquish their non-related properties.
EBASCO was one of those companies.
In 1949 EBASCO’s Electric Power and Light Corporation was dissolved. In its
place, Middle South Utilities, Inc., Entergy former name, was formed as a
holding company for Arkansas Power and Light, Louisiana Power and Light,
Mississippi Power and Light, and New Orleans Public Service, Inc. By special
request of New Orleans officials, NOPSI was allowed to keep its gas and
transit operations in the city.
In MSU’s 1949 annual report, the company’s first president, Edgar Dixon, noted
in his letter to shareholders that the year was “one of growth and progress
for the companies of the Middle South System.” He reported that the company
was paying a dividend of 27.5 cents a share to more than 25,000 stockholders
“who reside in every state of the country and in 24 foreign countries.” At the
end of its first year of operations, MSU served over 625,000 customers in more
than 1,600 communities.
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