E.ON Splits Power Business

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Europe's largest utility, E.ON SE (XETRA:EOAN) (Düsseldorf, Germany), has split its business operations into two in order to refocus its future investments into renewable energy.

E.ON will now focus on renewables, energy networks and customer solutions while the spin-off, Uniper, will handle conventional power generation (hydro, natural gas, coal) and global energy trading. The split comes as a result of years of heavy losses at E.ON, due to weak electricity demand, conventional power plant closures and billions of euro in impairment costs against the shut-down of its nuclear plants following the 2011 decision by the German government to exit nuclear power.

E.ON had hoped to offload its nuclear power plants--all of which are facing closure in the coming decade--into Uniper but was thwarted by the government, which feared E.ON would then shirk its responsibility to pay for the decommissioning of those plants. E.ON will retain its nuclear operations, which it hopes to spin off into an independent internal division, but the company's operational Swedish nuclear plants will go to Uniper.

E.ON first revealed plans to split its business in December 2014. For additional information, see December 3, 2014, article - E.ON Goes Green, Splits Company in Two.

"This liberates us from continually having to make compromises," argued E.ON Chief Executive Officer Johannes Teyssen. "Rather than just changing our organizational setup, we're spinning off our conventional-generation and energy-trading businesses to form a company, called Uniper, that will become something completely independent. Separating these businesses, which were formerly managed together, will make both companies more agile and sharpen their profile for customers and investors. Our ambition is for both companies, which soon will be legally independent of one another, to become leading players in their respective energy worlds."

Uniper will have a generation portfolio consisting of roughly 40 gigawatts (GW) of capacity.

Assuming that shareholders agree to the split in June, the spinoff will take place in the second half of the year when E.ON divests its majority stake in Uniper and lists the company's shares on the stock market. Its remaining stake will be sold off in the medium term.

Last month, the supervisory board of Germany's second-largest utility, RWE AG (XETRA:RWE) (Essen, Germany), unanimously approved a restructuring plan that will split the company's renewable energy and conventional power operations.

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