“E.ON is becoming a bargain”

A wave of mergers and acquisitions in the energy market does not bode well for the future of German utility E.ON as an independent company, Jürgen Flauger writes in Handelsblatt. “E.ON has been low priced for some time now,” Flauger writes, explaining that the company is currently valued at less than 14 billion euros – compared to the 105 billion euros it was worth in 2008. E.ON’s involvement for covering the costs of disposing of Germany’s nuclear waste had so far been an enormous liability in the company’s accounts that prevented a hostile takeover, he writes. “But E.ON is going to lose this poison pill,” as the group, along with other energy companies in Germany, is going to transfer responsibility for the nuclear clean-up to a public fund, Flauger explains. Given that the company’s operative business is going well, its low price makes a hostile takeover of E.ON “more likely than ever,” he writes.

Read the article in German here (behind paywall).

For background, see the CLEW dossier Utilities and the energy transition and the CLEW factsheet Securing utility payments for the nuclear clean-up.