Public Utility Holding Company Act

The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA), also known as the Wheeler-Rayburn Act, was a law that was passed by the United States Congress to facilitate regulation of electric utilities, by either limiting their operations to a single state, and thus subjecting them to effective state regulation, or forcing divestitures so that each became a single integrated system serving a limited geographic area. Another purpose of PUHCA was to keep utility holding companies that were engaged in regulated businesses from engaging in unregulated businesses.

On August 8, 2005, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law, repealing PUHCA.

PUHCA was one of a number of trust-busting and securities regulation initiatives that were enacted in response to the government investigations of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression, which included the collapse of Samuel Insull's public utility holding company empire. By 1932, the eight largest utility holding companies controlled 73 percent of the investor-owned electric industry. Their complex, highly leveraged, corporate structures were very difficult for individual states to regulate.

The Act required the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve a holding company engaging in a non-utility business and such businesses to be kept separate from the utility's regulated business. Holding companies were required to register with the SEC, which would then conduct administrative proceedings to limit each holding company to ownership of a single integrated electric system (with certain exceptions) through the divestiture of the securities of other public utility and unrelated companies.

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