Blackout That Darkened NYC Is Brushed Off by ConEd Investors

(Bloomberg) -- Consolidated Edison Inc. investors are largely shrugging off the power failure that crippled much of Manhattan over the weekend, brought the subway system to a halt and darkened Times Square.

Shares in the New York City-based utility were down less than 1% at 9:57 a.m. in New York. That’s likely because the power outage was relatively brief and there weren’t any major injuries or property damage, said Kit Konolige, a Bloomberg Intelligence utility analyst.

“As a utility, you get a little bit of leeway for some outages within a certain small range,” he said in an interview.

To be sure, ConEd is taking some heat. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo expressed frustration over what he described as repeated failures on the utility’s system. “If they don’t give me an answer quickly, I’m going to go to ConEd headquarters,” he said in an interview with ABC News. “I’ll go speak to Mr. ConEd myself.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Millicent Dent in New York at mdent13@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6@bloomberg.net, Joe Ryan, Pratish Narayanan

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