WEC Energy Group

While transforming our long-term growth strategy into reality, we are committed to: Focusing on our core businesses of electric generation, electric and gas distribution, and pump manufacturing. Operating our utility companies efficiently and effectively while continuing to generate and deliver safe, reliable and reasonably priced energy. Building the financial strength needed to fund our growth strategy by selling non-performing and non-core assets, paying down debt, continuing our $400 million share buy-back program, and increasing earnings retained in the company. Growing the global manufacturing businesses of WICOR Industries through acquisitions and product development. Company emerges from receivership as the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company. Early 1920s:North American forms Wisconsin Electric Power Company (WEPCo); Lakeside Power Plant is built. North American subsidiary Wisconsin Gas and Electric's electrical properties are incorporated into WEPCo; its natural gas properties become a WEPCo subsidiary. WEPCo forms a new holding company, Wisconsin Energy, and establishes three new non-utility subsidiaries. Wisconsin Energy acquires Wicor, Inc., the parent company of Wisconsin Gas Co.; announces its long-range Power the Future plan. Wisconsin Energy Corporation is an $8.4 billion holding company with subsidiaries in electric generation, pump manufacturing, energy services and development, real estate, and electric, gas, steam, and water distribution. Its electric utilities serve more than one million customers, and its natural gas subsidiaries serve some 950,000. Wisconsin Energy's origins lie in the late 1880s, when financier Henry Villard consolidated Milwaukee's electric and streetcar companies into the Milwaukee Street Railway Company, a subsidiary of an early utility trust called the North American Company. Villard made his acquisitions quietly and in his own name. Within three years, his company held the properties of Edison Electric Illuminating Company, Badger Illuminating Company, Milwaukee Electric Light, Milwaukee City Railroad Company, and the Cream City Railway Company. To run his Milwaukee holdings Villard recruited Edison executive John I. Beggs. But before Beggs could do much work, the panic of 1893 hit and sent the Milwaukee Street Railway Company into receivership. On January 29, 1896, the company emerged from receivership as the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company (TMER&L). Beggs, who had remained president, concentrated on a burgeoning electric streetcar business and soon organized the Milwaukee Light, Heat, and Traction Company (MLH&T) to operate in the suburbs. By 1900 TMER&L and MLH&T had a combined total of 1,511 customers and more than 41.5 million paying passengers. Beggs also began making acquisitions. To MLH&T he added a series of southeastern Wisconsin utilities including the light, traction, and gas companies of Racine. In Milwaukee he consolidated the city's remaining electric and traction properties into TMER&L. But Beggs's ambitions were not limited to TMER&L and MLH&T. He independently controlled and operated the Wisconsin Traction, Light, Heat and Power Company (WTLH&PCo), and his dream was to create a network of interurban rail lines that would radiate spoke-like from Milwaukee and include a line from Chicago to Milwaukee to Green Bay. To execute his rail plan, Beggs first gained control of North American. He became the company's largest single shareholder by receiving stock in lieu of salary and buying shares at depressed prices. Once on the board, he welded together a coalition of like-minded members and was able to dictate company policy although he never held an executive post. Between 1900 and 1905, MLH&T launched a series of interurban lines through suburban Milwaukee toward Green Bay, Madison, Janesville, Beloit, and Chicago. Having reached the limits of its service area, Beggs worked unsuccessfully for the next five years to merge with the Easte