ST. LOUIS, July 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ameren Energy Resources (AER), the holding company for merchant generation and energy marketing services for Ameren Corporation (NYSE: AEE), announced today the company is reducing staff. This comes in response to rising environmental compliance costs and tough economic and power market conditions.
This week AER notified employees affected by a reduction of 55 positions which will result in a potential loss of employment of 42 employees from multiple locations in Illinois. This restructuring will affect employees within AER's Generation Technical Services (GTS) group. GTS employees are based throughout Illinois, including in Collinsville, Ill., and at the company's Peoria Resource Center (onsite at Edwards Power Station in Bartonville, Ill.) and the Effingham Resource Center, in Effingham, Ill. Those affected provide support for AER generating plants and include clerical, administrative, training, document control and engineering professionals. The majority of the affected employees will be leaving AER in early September, with a smaller group expected to leave next March.
"At AER, we have significantly reduced our budget as we adjust our spending to become a smaller organization to meet the changing economics of the industry," says AER President and Chief Executive Officer Chuck Naslund. "AER is reducing its capital-intensive projects given the high cost of financing those projects in the current credit-constrained financial markets. At the same time, we have redefined much of the construction work being planned at our power plants.
"In addition to various other cost-cutting measures, we regretfully need to reduce the size of our organization," Naslund added. "We empathize with our employees affected by this restructuring and are working to support them during this difficult time."
The company is offering severance benefits, including outplacement and career transition services, such as job fairs, meetings with recruiters and other career-related programs and resources.
While AER will continue to occupy space at the Peoria and Effingham facilities, today the company also announced that by year-end 2009, AER is vacating 32,000 square feet of office space at the Collinsville Resource Center on Eastport Plaza Drive, where AER has housed staff since 2008. AER is working to sublease the office space to another party.
Under the Ameren holding company structure, AER is the non-rate-regulated generation business segment for Ameren Energy Generating Company's and AmerenEnergy Resources Generating Company's six coal-fired plants plus multiple natural gas-fired units. AER also includes AmerenEnergy Medina Valley Cogen L.L.C., which operates a natural gas-fired facility in Mossville, Ill., and Ameren Energy Marketing, which sells retail electricity to Illinois businesses and wholesale power throughout the United States.
With assets of approximately $23 billion, Ameren companies serve 2.4 million electric customers and one million natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area of Missouri and Illinois.
SOURCE Ameren Corporation
SOURCE: Ameren Corporation
Web site: http://www.ameren.com/