NEM is pleased to announce that the New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. (NYMEX) has been elected to the Executive Committee. NYMEX is the world's largest physical commodity futures exchange, and the preeminent trading forum for energy, and precious metals, in North America. NYMEX will be represented by Joe Raia, Managing Director, within NEM.

NEM's Winter Executive Committee Meeting will be held in San Diego at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina, West Tower, on January 16 and 17, 2003. This meeting will be for NEM Executive Committee Members only. As in the past, the Executive Committee will establish the policy positions and priorities for NEM for the coming year. A registration form is hotlinked here for your convenience. A block of rooms has been reserved at the rate of $189 per night. Place your reservations at 619-291-2900 or 888-625-5144. Reservations must be received by December 16, 2002, in order to guarantee the discounted rate.

All Executive Committeee Members are requested to attend. An agenda will be sent out prior to the meeting.

Next year’s Annual Membership Meeting and National Restructuring Conference will be held April 3 and 4, 2003, at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill. We have arranged for additional space to accommodate more attendees with a special room for exhibits and added sponorship opportunities. Breakfast and all breaks will be in the exhibition room that is adjacent to and visible from the general session. The Agenda is hotlinked here for your convenience. A registration form is hotlinked is hotlinked here for your convenience.

Members who wish to be speakers, sponsors or exhibitors should contact headquarters immediately. Government officials and PUC commissioners have already started to RSVP.

Thanks to the efforts of Steve Greene, a meeting has been scheduled for NEM members to be briefed on the work of the CCROs on Thursday, October 24, 2002, in PG&E Corporation's DC office located at 700 Eleventh Street, NW, Suite 250 (12th & G Street exit from Metro Center stop) between 1PM EST and 3PM EST. For emergencies, directions, etc., the office number is (202) 638-3500. There is only room for 25, so please advise NEM headquarters if you plan to attend.

For those who cannot make the meeting in person the NEM bridge will be available by dialing 703-788-0600 and using passcode 209353.

An EPRI CME (CIM Market Extensions) subcommittee is compiling a glossary of terms used in the electricity wholesale market. They are trying to set up a central data repository for all the terms and definitions used by the various players in the wholesale electricity markets in North America. They already have several glossaries of such terms, including the SMD Tariff, NERC, EIA, and CME. They will also be getting terms used by the various ISOs, such as NYISO, PJM, CAISO. They would like to ensure inclusion of all the possible terms used by the market participants. A draft glossary of terms compiled thus far is available. NEM members are requested to forward glossaries or other sources that they believe should be included to gay.cook@thespigroup.com. The full text of the Draft Glossary is available on the NEM Website.

Standard & Poor's prepared a study entitled, "Transparency and Disclosure: Overview of Methodology and Study Results-United States." The study assesses transparency and disclosure practices of major public companies around the world. The study ranks U.K. and U.S. companies as providing the highest levels of disclosure. The study notes that the main similarity in disclosure practices across regions is that financial information is disclosed more than information pertaining to ownership, investor rights, or board information. With respect to U.S. companies in particular, the study found that there is considerable variance in the disclosures set forth in annual reports. The report also found that transparency and disclosure rankings were inversely related to market risk and that, "U.S. companies that provide more voluntary disclosure in their annual reports command a higher stock price." The full text of the Standard & Poor's study is available from NEM headquarters.

SEC has proposed additional rules to implement the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The proposed rules would require companies to report: 1) the number and identity of financial experts on a company's audit committee as well as their status as independent of management; and 2) whether (and if not, why not) a company has adopted a code of ethics applicable to the principal executive officer and senior financial officers as well as whether amendments to the code have been made. It is proposed that companies file an annual internal control report as part of their annual report and conduct quarterly evaluations of internal controls and procedures for financial reporting. Finally, the proposed rules prohibit officers and directors of an issuer as well as those acting under their direction from taking action to, "fraudulently influence, coerce, manipulate or mislead the auditor of the issuer's financial statements for the purpose of rendering those financial statements materially misleading." Comments on the proposed rules are due thirty days after publication in the Federal Register. The full text of the Press Release is available on the NEM Website. The full text of the Proposed Rules will be posted on the NEM Website when made available electronically.

The Commission has issued an additional order on the market redesign proposal of the CAISO. The Commission retained the $250/MWh bid cap but clarified that in order to allow generators to recover operating costs, they may submit bids above the bid cap (although such bids can't set the market clearing price and will be subject to justification and refund). With respect to the Automatic Mitigation Procedures (AMP), the Commission ordered that it should not be applied to imports. However, bidders outside of California must continue to submit zero bids into CAISO markets. The 10% creditworthiness adder to the market clearing price paid to generator bids will expire October 31, 2002. The Commission also approved the modification to the implementation schedule such that a modified day ahead market will be implemented by January 1, 2003, and the remaining Phase II issues will be postponed until the implementation of Phase 3 in Fall 2003. The full text of the Order is available on the NEM Website.