Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935

Public Utility Holding Company Act

Long title	An Act to provide for control and regulation of public-utility holding companies, and for other purposes.
Acronyms (colloquial)	PUHCA
Nicknames	Wheeler-Rayburn Act
Enacted by	the 74th United States Congress
Effective	October 1, 1935
Citations
Public law	74-333 15 U.S.C.A. § 79 et seq.
Statutes at Large	74-687
Codification
Titles amended	15 U.S.C.: Commerce and Trade
U.S.C. sections created	15 U.S.C. ch. 2C—Public Utility Holding Companies § 79 et seq.
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as S. 1725 by Burton K. Wheeler (D–MT) on February 6, 1935 Committee consideration by Interstate Commerce Committee, House Commerce Committee Passed the Senate on June 11, 1935 (56 to 32) Passed the House on August 24, 1935 (222 to 112) House agreed to amendment on July 2, 1935 (323 to 81) Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 26, 1935
Major amendments
National Energy Act of 1978 Energy Policy Act of 1992 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 Repealed by Energy Policy Act of 2005
United States Supreme Court cases
1938 - Electric Bond and Share Company v. Securities and Exchange Commission 1946 - American Power & Light Co. v. Securities and Exchange Commission 1946 - North American Co. v. SEC

The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA),^[1] also known as the Wheeler-Rayburn Act, was a US federal law giving the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to regulate, license, and break up electric utility holding companies. It limited holding company operations to a single state, thus subjecting them to effective state regulation. It also broke up any holding companies with more than two tiers, forcing divestitures so that each became a single integrated system serving a limited geographic area. Another purpose of the PUHCA was to keep utility holding companies engaged in regulated businesses from also engaging in unregulated businesses. The act was based on the conclusions and recommendations of the 1928-35 Federal Trade Commission investigation of the electric industry. On March 12, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt released a report he commissioned by the National Power Policy Committee. This report became the template for the PUHCA. The political battle over its passage was one of the bitterest of the New Deal, and was followed by eleven years of legal appeals by holding companies led by the Electric Bond and Share Company, which finally completed its breakup in 1961.

On August 26, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the bill into law.^[2]

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 repealed the PUHCA.