Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Germany nationalizes country’s biggest gas importer. It still needs to be approved by EU

The German government said Wednesday that it has agreed to nationalize the country’s biggest natural gas importer, Uniper, expanding state intervention in the industry to prevent an energy shortage.

The deal with Uniper builds on a rescue package agreed to in July and features a capital increase of 8 billion euros (dollars) that Germany will finance. As part of the agreement, the government will gain a 99% stake in the energy supplier, which until now was controlled by Finland-based Fortum. The Finnish government has the largest stake in Fortum.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck said the deal was necessary because of the significance that Uniper plays in the German gas market. It still needs to be approved by the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm.

1 comment:

  1. The German government will spend €8 billion to acquire 99% of the shares of ailing gas giant Uniper after agreeing with the Finnish government, whose state-company Fortum is a major shareholder.

    The nationalisation of Uniper, once created as a bad bank to concentrate fossil assets of E.ON, follows repeated attempts by the German government to keep it going.

    Bleeding tens to hundreds of millions of euros per day as contracted gas flows from Russia stopped coming, Berlin offered credit lines and created a gas levy to mutualise the costs of keeping business running. Now, the government is undertaking the country’s largest ever nationalisation.

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