Roll-Up: The Past, Present, and Future of Utilities Consolidation

Thomas J. Flaherty, a retired senior partner from Strategy&, enjoyed a global consulting career spanning over forty-five years, leading utilities consulting practices at several top-tier firms. Focusing on all sectors of the utilities industry, he specialized in corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions, business models, organization architecture, and innovation.
The early 1990s triggered policy, regulatory, and economic factors to enable market competition, driving utilities to seek greater scale within a highly fragmented sector. Mr. Flaherty led hundreds of merger and acquisition analyses for clients, including the vast majority of U.S. utilities stock transactions and deals in multiple global regions. These transactions transformed the U.S. power and gas sectors, resulting in consolidation of the industry from approximately 150 tradable companies in 1995 to less than 50 today.
His recognized expertise in synergies quantification, regulatory strategy, and post-close integration led to testimony before twenty-five federal and state regulatory agencies and frequent articles on mergers and acquisitions.