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Finnish utility Fortum is exploring buying part of its former subsidiary Uniper, three years after suffering multibillion-euro losses as the German gas importer was pushed to the brink of collapse.
Fortum, majority owned by the Finnish state, in 2022 suffered a pre-tax loss of almost €6bn on its investment in Uniper, after selling its stake to the German government as part of a €13.5bn bailout of Uniper when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine sparked an energy crisis in Europe.
While Finland’s then finance minister subsequently said building up an 80 per cent stake in Uniper had been a mistake, Fortum has nonetheless expressed interest in acquiring the company’s highly profitable assets in Sweden, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Uniper has a stake in each of the Scandinavian country’s three active nuclear power plants — two of which also include Fortum as a shareholder — and also owns 74 Swedish hydro power plants.
Fortum said in a feasibility study published last month that it wanted to extend the lifetime of its existing nuclear power plants and build new ones due to rising demand for power.
The company declined to comment on what it described as “rumours”, but said it had secured the right of first offer on the Swedish assets as part of its exit agreement, and had always maintained that it would be interested “in looking into these [assets] if they were ever to become available”.
Selling the Swedish assets — which one analyst at a European investment bank estimated were worth several billion euros — would require splitting up Uniper. It is unclear if the German state, which owns 99 per cent of the company, would be willing to do that.
The analyst also said he doubted that Finland’s government would make another multibillion-euro investment in Uniper, adding that Sweden’ s state-owned power company Vattenfall would be a more logical buyer.
“We saw what happened back in the day. It was a big failure,” he said. “The Finnish state is interested in getting some nice dividends out of Fortum. This is the key priority for them — not doing big transactions.”
A decision on Uniper’s future will fall to the next German government, which is expected to take office in early May after election winner Friedrich Merz, leader of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), struck a coalition deal on Wednesday.
Government officials have in the past also raised the possibility of selling a stake through an initial public offering. Either way, Merz’s government was likely to want to keep a strategic minority stake in Uniper given its strategic importance, said a person familiar with the CDU’s thinking.
Germany wants to make a profit on the investment in the company, after injecting €13.5bn in equity and granting it €6bn in loans. Uniper racked up tens of billions in losses as it scrambled to replace lost Russian gas.
Uniper’s market valuation, based on the less than 1 per cent of its shares that are still publicly listed, is about €16bn.
Vattenfall was a possible bidder for the Swedish part of the business, one of the people said. Norway’s government-backed energy group Equinor could be a candidate to buy all or part of Uniper, two other people said. The companies declined to comment.
Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský, who already owns the East German coal giant Leag and has a stake in the steel division of Thyssenkrupp, could also make a bid, the people said. A spokesperson for Křetínský declined to comment.
The German finance ministry and Uniper declined to comment.
Additional reporting by Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, Raphael Minder and Martin Sandbu
