Power Supplier Burned by Texas Freeze Fires Its Entire Staff
Power Supplier Burned by Texas Freeze Fires Its Entire Staff
(Bloomberg) -- Liberty Power, an electricity retailer that serves customers in about a dozen states, fired all its employees after suffering deep losses in the Texas freeze.
The company was unable to give employees a 60-day notice because of “events which are outside our control that impacted our ability to predict future revenues to support continued operations,” President Derik Viner told staff late Sunday night in an email seen by Bloomberg News.
Liberty Power is the latest power company to take a hit from the cold blast in February that left millions without power and killed more than 100 people. It follows Griddy Energy LLC, which exposed consumers to volatile power prices and quickly went out of business. The main Texas grid operator is still short almost $3 billion in payments from market participants.
Viner and Liberty Power didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Liberty Power had about 100 employees and operates in 11 states and Washington D.C. Between 20% and 25% of its roughly 100,000 customers are from Texas, the people said.
Liberty Power was founded by David Hernandez and Alberto Daire in 2001, according to its website. Hernandez was a finance manager at Enron for two years before becoming CEO of the retailer, according to his LinkedIn profile. He previously worked at Nortel Networks along with Daire, their profiles said.
The two founders also didn’t immediately respond to request for comments.
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