NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) Jan. 9, 2004--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that Duke Energy Corp.'s (BBB+/Negative/A-2) announcement that the company will incur a $3.3 billion pretax charge in fourth-quarter 2003 relating mainly to the merchant generation assets in the southeastern U.S. is a negative credit event. Standard&Poor's views the charge as reflecting poorly on strategic decision-making in the past. At the same time, however, the impairment points to a more focused merchant generation approach, as it reduces the merchant generation fleet capacity by about one-third. Nevertheless, Standard&Poor's expects that the merchant generation operations will continue to adversely affect the consolidated business and financial profiles over the intermediate term. The impairment is not expected
