Exelon backs away from NRG Energy bid

Rebuffed by NRG Energy shareholders at the company's annual meeting yesterday,  rival US Nuclear power giant and utility operator Exelon Corporation has terminated its $7.45-billion revised hostile takeover bid for NRG Energy Inc

Based on the preliminary vote count at the annual meeting, NRG stockholders voted to re-elect all NRG's director nominees, rejecting Exelon's proposal to expand NRG's Board with its own slate of five director.

''Exelon Corporation announced yesterday that, effective immediately, it is terminating its pending offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of NRG Energy, Inc. common stock at a fixed exchange ratio of 0.545 of a share of Exelon common stock for each share of NRG common stock,'' the company said in a statement.

Chicago-based Exelon, which reported $19 billion in annual revenue, said that it took this action in light of the proxy vote results announced yesterday at the NRG annual meeting with  Exelon chairman and CEO John Rowe saying, ''The NRG shareholders have spoken, and Exelon will move on. We wish NRG and its owners well.''

A combination of the two energy majors would have created the largest power company in the US, ahead of Atlanta-based Southern Co. and Columbus, Ohio-based American Electric Power, with a generation capacity of around 47,000 MW - enough to power nearly 45 million homes.

Exelon owns and operates electric utilities in Illinois and Pennsylvania and power plants throughout the US, including the nation's largest fleet of nuclear plants, while NRG owns more than 24,000 megawatts of generation.