Peabody Holding Company Inc. history

In 1885 26-year-old Francis Peabody purchased Daniels’s interest in the business, renaming it Pea-body & Co.

In 1890 Peabody incorporated his business as the Peabody Coal Company, and expanded into wholesaling.

In 1895, it began operations of its first mine in Williamson County, Illinois and later expanded its operations in Illinois.

In 1913, the company won its first long-term contract to supply Chicago Edison Company, the predecessor to utilityCommonwealth Edison.

By 1917 Peabody was producing 12 million tons of coal per year from mines in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia, and Wyoming.

By 1924 Peabody Coal had one billion tons of coal reserves and was the largest coal producer in Illinois.

It reported net sales of $29.2 million and net income of $1.6 million in 1925, when the company sold 11.9 million tons of coal.

Commonwealth Edison (Edison), Peoples Gas Light & Coke Company (Peoples Gas), and several other Illinois utilities bought a controlling share of Pea-body’s stock in 1928.

Having anticipated and adapted to changes in the marketplace, Peabody Coal thrived, gaining a listing on the Midwest Stock Exchange in 1929 and becoming known as a coal producer rather than retailer.

In 1944 the company reported net sales of $43 million and net income of $2 million.

When Jack Peabody died in 1946, his son Stuyvesant Peabody Jr. was elected the company’s new president.

Construction work on two new mines began in 1948.

In 1949, Peabody Coal was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Following several years of declining sales and expensive mine development efforts, Pea-body sustained a net loss of $640,000 in 1954 on the sale of nearly ten million tons of coal.

Peabody stayed on briefly as chairman of the board, retiring in February 1955.

Russell Kelce died two years after the Peabody-Sinclair merger, in 1957.

In 1961 Peabody became the largest coal producer in the United States, surpassing its rival, Consolidated Coal Company, for the first time.

Prior to joining Peabody in 1963, Mullins was president of Midland Electric Coal Company.

In 1965 the joint venture began fulfilling a 13-year contract to deliver a total of 30 million tons of coal to Japanese steel mills.

He joined Exxon in 1967 as operations manager of the company’s coal and shale oil department.

In 1968, Peabody's assets were acquired by Kennecott Copper Corporation.

For five years after the FTC’s divestiture order in 1971, Kennecott unsuccessfully tried to appeal its case.

In 1973 contract purchases accounted for nearly 90% of Peabody’s sales, at prices that averaged less than $6 per ton.

In 1976, after eight years of litigation, the FTC ordered Kennecott to divest itself of Peabody Coal Company.

The FTC approved the transaction and the newly formed Peabody Holding Company acquired Peabody Coal’s stock in June 1977 for $1.1 billion.

In January 1978 Robert Quenon became president of Peabody Coal.

The safety of Peabody mines was called into question beginning in 1982, when the company was charged with tampering with the results of safety tests at its mine in Morganfield, Kentucky.

In 1983, Quenon was made president and CEO of Peabody's parent company, Peabody Holding Co., and Wayne T. Ewing was named president of Peabody Coal.

By 1989 more than half of Peabody’s output was low-sulfur coal, and Pea-body was the largest United States producer of this product.

Boeing, Bechtel, and Eastern Enterprises sold their combined 45% interest to Hanson in February 1990 for $504 billion.

In 1991, G. S. (Sam) Shiflett became the company's 13th president.

In 1993, Peabody Energy expanded their holdings in the Pacific with the acquisition of three mines in Australia and subsequently developed a fourth operation in New South Wales.

Just before the purchase, Peabody had paid $1.3 million to settle a United Mine Workers claim related to the 1994 transfer of coal reserves to Black Beauty, a nonunion company.

In May 1998, Lehman Merchant Banking Partners emerged as Peabody Group's new owner, paying Texas Utilities $2.3 billion.

Peabody Coal raised its stake in Evansville, Indiana-based Black Beauty Coal Co. to 81.7 percent in February 1999.

Peabody Energy netted $456 million in an initial public offering held on May 22, 2001.

In 2002, Peabody launched its Peabody Energy Australia Coal Co. following the acquisition of the Wilkie Creek Mine in Queensland’s Surat Basin.

The North Goonyella coal mine was acquired by Peabody in 2004.

In October 2006, Peabody completed an acquisition of Excel Coal Limited, an independent coal company in Australia.

On August 30, 2007, Ernie Fletcher, the governor of the United States state of Kentucky signed into state law a bill that will provide approximately $300 million in incentives to Peabody to build a coal gasification plant in that state.

At the 2010 World Energy Congress, Peabody CEO Gregory Boyce proposed a plan that advocated for the expanded use of coal worldwide, placing emphasis on geographic areas with limited or no access to electricity.”

As of 2011, Peabody’s Australian mining operations are located in Queensland and New South Wales.