Cinergy Announces Corporate Center Restructuring.Business Editors CINCINNATI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 10, 2000 Cinergy Corp. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :CIN CIN cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) A term used to categorize degrees of dysplasia arising in the epithelium, or outer layer, of the cervix. ) announced today that it will take steps to reduce the size of its corporate center as it continues to prepare for the competitive environment in the energy industry. The goal of the reorganization is to create a small core that provides corporate strategy and governance and a shared services shared services, n.pl the administrative, clinical, or other service functions that are common to two or more hospitals or their health care facilities and used jointly or cooperatively by them. group that is centralized to provide economies of scale for functions supporting all business units. Certain functions will be decentralized de·cen·tral·ize v. de·cen·tral·ized, de·cen·tral·iz·ing, de·cen·tral·iz·es v.tr. 1. To distribute the administrative functions or powers of (a central authority) among several local authorities. into the company's four business units -- energy commodities, energy delivery, international and Cinergy Investments. "This effort is part of our continuing program to restructure Cinergy to meet the changing business environment for energy companies," said James E. Rogers, vice chairman, president and chief executive officer. "We have been very successful in restructuring our business unit operations Unit operations A structure of logic used for synthesizing and analyzing processing schemes in the chemical and allied industries, in which the basic underlying concept is that all processing schemes can be composed from and decomposed into a series of without layoffs, and we plan to continue that success with the corporate center initiative." Currently, Cinergy's corporate center has about 1,120 full-time equivalent Full-time equivalent (FTE) is a way to measure a worker's involvement in a project, or a student's enrollment at an educational institution. An FTE of 1.0 means that the person is equivalent to a full-time worker, while an FTE of 0.5 signals that the worker is only half-time. positions. The new corporate center organization will consist of about 540 positions. Under the reorganization, approximately 340 of the current corporate center positions will be moved to the business units. About 240 positions will be eliminated; however, more than 75 of those positions are currently vacant and about 40 positions are covered under bargaining unit A bargaining unit in labor relations is a group of employees with a clear and identifiable community of interests who are (under U.S. law) represented by a single labor union in collective bargaining and other dealings with management. agreements. Major corporate center activities include finance and accounting, legal, information technology, purchasing, corporate communications Corporate communications is the process of facilitating information and knowledge exchanges with internal and key external groups and individuals that have a direct relationship with an enterprise. , governmental and regulatory affairs Regulatory Affairs (RA), also called Government Affairs, is a profession within regulated industries, such as pharmaceuticals, medical devices, energy, and banking. Regulatory Affairs professionals usually have responsibility for the following general areas: "Now that our business units have profit-and-loss responsibility, it is important for them to have the people who support them as a part of their team, rather than in another organization," said Rogers. "Each business unit president is held responsible for that organization's contribution to the corporation's success, and this new structure gives them the necessary complement of skills to meet their goals." A voluntary, limited enhanced early retirement plan will be offered to about 100 non-union employees who work in selected areas of the company specified by management. Qualified employees must be at least 54 years of age with a minimum of five years of service by May 31, 2000. The reductions in positions are expected to result in about 45 employees being displaced. Company placement services will be available to assist employees in finding another job inside the company or with another organization. A severance plan will also be available to them. The corporate center restructuring is expected to be completed in June, 2000 and is estimated to reduce costs by about $25 million annually. Cinergy Corp. is one of the nation's leading diversified energy companies. Its operating companies, The Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company and PSI Energy, Inc., serve more than 1.4 million electric customers and 478,000 gas customers in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. Cinergy is active in U.S. power and natural gas markets and maintains a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week trading operation. The company's international business unit, Cinergy Global Resources, has assets in power generation, transmission and distribution projects in the Czech Republic, Spain, the United Kingdom, Zambia, Estonia, and the United States. Cinergy's 1999 revenues were $5.9 billion, and its total assets are $9.6 billion. Cinergy's energy system comprises approximately 11,000 megawatts at 14 baseload stations and seven peaking stations. Its natural gas distribution system is connected to six interstate pipelines. |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion