Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is an American nuclear power company formed in 1999 from the nuclear power division of the original Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It offers nuclear products and services to utilities internationally, including nuclear fuel, service and maintenance, instrumentation, control and design of nuclear power plants. Westinghouse's world headquarters are located in the Pittsburgh suburb of Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania. Brookfield Business Partners, a Canadian private equity fund and a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management is the majority owner of Westinghouse.
On March 24, 2017, then parent company Toshiba announced that Westinghouse Electric Company would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy because of US$9 billion of losses from nuclear reactor construction projects. The projects responsible for this loss are mostly the construction of four AP1000 reactors at Vogtle in Georgia and the Virgil C. Summer plant in South Carolina. Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 29, 2017. In 2018, Westinghouse was acquired by Brookfield Business Partners and some partners.
History
Westinghouse Electric Company was formed in 1999 after the original company with that name, George Westinghouse's Westinghouse Electric, founded in 1886, ceased to exist due to a series of divestitures and mergers through the mid-to-late 1990s. These included Westinghouse Electric's purchase of CBS in 1995, expansion into communications and broadcasting, and the selling off of most non-broadcast operations by 1998; renaming itself CBS Corporation. That same year, the Westinghouse Power Generation Business unit was sold to Siemens of Germany. In 1999, CBS Corporation sold its nuclear business (Westinghouse Electric Company) to British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL). and a year later CBS Corporation was merged into Viacom (1971-2005), thus putting an end to the original Westinghouse. (Legally, Westinghouse Electric Corporation still exists, mainly for the purpose of licensing, as a subsidiary of CBS Corp.)
Sale to Toshiba
In July 2005, BNFL confirmed it planned to sell Westinghouse, then estimated to be worth $2 billion. This attracted interest from several companies, including Toshiba, General Electric and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. When the Financial Times reported on January 23, 2006 that Toshiba had won the bid, it valued the company's offer at $5bn (£2.8bn). On February 6, 2006 Toshiba confirmed it was buying Westinghouse Electric Company for $5.4bn and announced it would sell a minority stake to investors. The sale surprised many industry experts who questioned the wisdom of BNFL selling one of the world's largest producers of nuclear reactors shortly before the market for nuclear power was expected to grow substantially; China, the United States and the United Kingdom were all expected to invest heavily in nuclear power. After the 2005 Indo-US nuclear deal, there was also hope that India's plan of massive investment in nuclear plants would help to revive the U.S. nuclear power industry. Reasons in favor of a sale were: The commercial risk of the company's business in Asia may have been too high for a company then owned by taxpayers; if Westinghouse won the bid for any new nuclear stations in a UK competition, questions may be raised of favoritism, but if it lost, it might have been seen as a lack of faith in its own technology. Finally, the record of UK governments building nuclear plants had been a commercial disaster.
On October 16, 2006 the acquisition of Westinghouse Electric Company for $5.4 billion was completed, with Toshiba obtaining a 77% share, partners The Shaw Group a 20% share and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. a 3% share. On 13 August 2007 Toshiba sold 10% to Kazatomprom, the national uranium company for the Republic of Kazakhstan, for US$540 million, leaving Toshiba with 67%. Kazatomprom's ownership is entirely passive, with no voting or veto rights or presence on the board of directors.
In September, 2011, Toshiba was reported to be in talks to acquire the Shaw stake and both companies confirmed the story soon thereafter. Shaw CEO James Bernhard said, that Toshiba was paying US$1.6 Bn for the Shaw-owned 20% stake, and that it was the 50% rise in the yen on its yen-denominated debt over five years, which had led it to exercise its sale option. Toshiba said in late 2012 it was open to, and considering, having other partners invest in the business. The purchase closed in January 2013, and brought Toshiba's share in the company to 87% as a result of Shaw exercising its option.