and his successor, William B. Ellis, PSNH declared bankruptcy in January 1988 due to problems getting a license for the completed Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. In 1999, Con Edison and Northeast Utilities entered negotiations that would have created one of the largest utilities in the United States. However, Con Edison backed out of the merger in 2001 after Connecticut's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal threatened lawsuits to block it. Legislation passed in the late 1990s deregulated the electricity market in New England and required regulated utilities to divest generating stations to competitive suppliers. In 1999 the company divested all of the generating assets of WMECO and CL&P per requirements of the Massachusetts and Connecticut legislation. The company retained some of these assets by transferring them to a new subsidiary called Northeast Generation which functioned as a competitive supplier and sold the other assets entirely: WMECO's West Springfield Generating Station and several related hydroelectric and fossil fuel generating units were sold to Con Edison, while other assets (most notably the Northfield Mountain hydroelectric facility) were transferred to Northeast Generation. In 2001, NU sold the assets and operations of its subsidiary, the Holyoke Water Power Company, to the City of Holyoke including the HWP electrical distribution system and customer base and all generation with the exception of the Mt. Tom coal-fired power plant which NU retained. The city's municipal gas and electric department assumed responsibility for the generators and absorbed the HWP distribution customer base. Between 2000 and 2002 due to state laws, NU divested WMECO, CL&P, and PSNH's nuclear generating assets which consisted of their stakes in the Seabrook, Millstone, and Vermont Yankee stations. In November 2005, the company announced it would sell its unregulated competitive businesses, including generation and energy services. In November 2006 the company had essentially completed the divestiture of its competitive businesses. In 2006, NU decided to sell the generating units it had earlier retained in the 1999 divestiture as competitive suppliers and shut down its competitive generation business units. The Northeast Generation assets, including Mount Tom Station and Northfield Mountain, were all sold to Energy Capital Partners. PSNH continued to operate regulated hydroelectric and fossil fuel generation assets to serve its default/basic service customers who did not choose an alternative competitive supplier. In October 2010, Northeast Utilities announced that it would merge with NSTAR, the major electric and gas provider in Greater Boston, with the resulting company