Kansas City Power & Light Co. (KCPL) has announced that its board of directors unanimously voted to terminate its amended and restated agreement and plan of merger with Western Resources Inc. and certain affiliated companies. Merger negotiations had been ongoing since March 1998.
In a letter to David Wittig, Western’s CEO, A. Drue Jennings, KCPL’s CEO, cited the problems at Western’s Protection One subsidiary and its impact on Western as a whole as a key factor in the decision. Western’s common stock has nose-dived from $43.13 upon announcement of the merger agreement March 18, 1998 to $16.94 on Dec. 31, 1999.
Jennings concluded in his letter, “Both sides worked hard to bring this transaction to a successful completion, and we obviously regret that events have required us to take this action.”
