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BERLIN (Reuters) – The German public bank KfW has reached an agreement to acquire a 20% stake in the German high-voltage network operator 50Hertz that was coveted by the Chinese State Grid.
State Grid last week made a final offer of just under a billion euros for this 20% stake put on sale by the Australian infrastructure fund IFM, sources told the
The Belgian Elia, the majority shareholder of 50Hertz, had a right of first refusal which he said Friday that he had exercised to sell the block on the same terms to KfW.
"For security reasons, the German government has a keen interest in protecting critical energy infrastructure," the German ministers of economy and finance said in a joint statement.
They stated that KfW's acquisition of the 50Hertz interest was, however, a temporary solution and that it was intended to be divested in the future.
German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier expressed concern in June that crucial infrastructure would come under the control of investors whose motives and backgrounds were unreliable and had made clear reference to 50Hertz.
"The transaction between Elia and KfW maintains cooperation between Belgium and Germany in the crucial area of power grid infrastructure," Elia said in a statement.
Elia specified that the acquisition of the block of 20% was made under financial conditions comparable to that of an equivalent stake already made with IFM in April for an amount of 976 million euros. State Grid had already tried to acquire this stake.
IFM and Elia acquired 50Hertz from the Swedish group Vattenfall in 2010 for 810 million euros.
50Hertz provides electricity to 18 million people.
(Victoria Bryan, Marc Joanny for French Service, edited by Wilfrid Exbrayat)
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