Uniper

2022. július 22. 20:49 Koffein Előzmény: #1472851

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https://www.ft.com/content/7c9fdaae-18d6-47af-912f...

Germany has agreed a €15bn rescue package for Uniper, and will take a 30 per cent stake in the energy company that came close to collapse after Russia slashed gas supplies to Europe’s largest economy.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who broke off his holiday in southern Germany to complete the deal, said Uniper was of “paramount importance” to the country’s economy and for safeguarding energy supplies to companies and residential customers.

Europe’s largest buyer of Russian gas, Uniper had been losing tens of millions of euros a day since Russia’s Gazprom drastically reduced supplies of the fuel to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in mid-June. Officials in Berlin worried that the company’s collapse might trigger a Lehman Brothers-style meltdown of the whole German energy sector.

Under the Uniper bailout, the company will be able to access up to €7.7bn in government support, as required. A credit line from German state-owned bank KfW will also be increased from €2bn to €9bn, and the government will be represented on the company’s supervisory board.

Scholz drew parallels between the bailout and former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi’s pledge to do “whatever it takes” during the eurozone debt crisis.

“It’s exactly the same now — we will do everything necessary to ensure that the country, its companies and citizens get through this situation,” he told reporters in Berlin.

The bailout comes on top of the €10bn in funding Scholz’s government has already provided to Gazprom’s German subsidiary, which Berlin took control of in April, and which operates gas storage facilities essential to meeting demand during winter.

But the bailout of Uniper will mean higher prices for German consumers. Under its terms, from October at the latest, Uniper will be legally entitled to pass on higher costs to its customers — corporates and municipal utilities.

These will then be able to pass on the extra costs to private households.

Robert Habeck, economy minister, said the new levy was necessitated by the “energy scarcity that Russia has artificially created”. It was, he added, “not the kind of ordinary fluctuation that the market can still digest”. But the government said it would provide more relief for consumers in the months ahead, including an expanded housing allowance.

Uniper chief executive Klaus-Dieter Maubach said his company had “a clear perspective on how the costs which arise due to the interrupted gas supplies from Russia can be shared by many shoulders going forward”, but warned that there was “no end in sight” for the energy crisis that has cost the utility billions of euros to date.

As part of the rescue package, Berlin will buy €267mn of new Uniper shares at €1.70 each, pending shareholder approval. The company’s shares were worth almost €11 each at close of trading in Frankfurt on Thursday but had fallen almost a third by Friday afternoon.

Uniper’s majority owner Fortum, which is in-turn majority owned by the Finnish government, will see its stake of almost 80 per cent diluted to 56 per cent. Scholz acknowledged that existing shareholders were making a “multibillion-dollar contribution” to saving the company.

Fortum chief executive Markus Rauramo warned that while Uniper had been stabilised for now, “further efforts will be required to create a long-term sustainable basis for the gas business”.

Germany is one of the most exposed countries to Russian gas: before the war in Ukraine, 55 per cent of its imports of the fuel came from Russia.

Benchmark European gas prices have almost doubled from already elevated levels since Russia reduced capacity on Nord Stream 1. Prices are 10 times the level they were in 2019.