Aes Global Power

AES Corporation is one of the largest independent producers of electrical power in the world, with an ownership stake in 177 facilities in Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Mexico, Pakistan, Panama, the United Kingdom, Venezuela, and the United States. The company supplies more than 59 gigawatts of electricity worldwide to 16 million customers through its electricity distribution network. The company's operations are grouped into four major business segments: Contract Generation; Competitive Supply; Large Utilities; and Growth Distribution. (investing@aes.com)

AES was the invention of Roger W. Sant and Dennis W. Bakke, who had served together in the Federal Energy Administration (FEA) during the Nixon and Ford administrations in the early to mid-1970s. The two had been instrumental in drafting preliminary versions of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA). The law was part of the federal government's attempt to deal with America's energy crisis, which, according to prevailing opinion at the time, was caused largely by American dependence on foreign oil. Seeking to reduce this dependence, PURPA mandated that electrical utilities fulfill any need they might have for new power by seeking out qualified co-generators and independent, small-scale, private-sector power producers.

In conjunction with this success, AES staked out a reputation as one of the world's most socially conscious and organizationally innovative companies. Such distinctions were a legacy of Sant and Bakke and a direct consequence of their backgrounds. Bakke was a devout Christian who readily acknowledged that his religious beliefs formed the basis of his world view. Sant, too, was raised a Christian, specifically a Mormon, and was an ardent environmentalist. Moreover, Bakke and Sant shared a common formative work experience in the federal bureaucracy, which inspired in them a deep and abiding distrust of centralized bureaucracies in either the public or private sector. Nevertheless, their youthful and idealistic desire to work for the government resulted in a strong and life-long commitment to public service.

Such principles and beliefs made AES a rather unique company. Indeed, Bakke and Sant maintained that the firm's primary goal was to build and nurture a firm that embodied their shared values, specifically integrity, fairness, fun, and social responsibility. A company that embodied these values, they felt, would in all likelihood make money. For AES, however, profits were neither an end in and of themselves nor the chief reason for the firm's existence. Rather, according to Bakke and Sant, money was the natural and inevitable byproduct of the firm's shared values.

By conscious design, in fact, AES plants were among the safest and cleanest in the world, with pollution-emissions rates, accident rates, and "plant availability" time all setting the standard for the electric power industry. "Plant availability" referred to the percentage of total potential capacity at which a plant was able to operate; taken as a group, AES power-generating facilities consistently averaged at least 90 percent availability. Moreover, Financial World magazine reported in 1993 that "the company's number of lost time accidents is 44 percent below the national average. Regarding its pollution-emissions rates, AES plants were reportedly running an estimated 58 percent below permitted emission levels for sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, averaging nearly one-sixth the rate reported by the majority of American plants. (McDonald D. 1999)

To further protect the environment, AES committed itself to a tree planting and preservation program, whereby the company agreed to plant or preserve enough trees to offset the carbon dioxide emissions from its power-generating facilities. Study into such a program was initiated in 1987 after growing concern by company executives that such emissions were contributing to global warming and therefore having a deleterious effect on the environment. The program got underway in earnest two years later when AES committed itself to planting more than 52 million trees in Guatemala over roughly a ten-year period. The project cost the company an estimated $2 million, an amount that reportedly nearly equaled AES profits for that year. (Rubino J. 1993)

Organizationally, AES established a decentralized corporate culture that gave company employees responsibility for most all aspects of business management. "Frequent and intensive cross-training, role rotation, and finance education for everyone are the rule," reported CFO magazine.

AES experienced remarkable growth during the 1990s and into 2000, with assets growing from $11 billion in 1997 to $37 billion in 2001. Due to an economic slowdown and volatile overseas markets, AES began a major restructuring effort in 2002 that included the sale of certain assets due to combat