By Elaine Green
As top Public Power Corporation (PPC) executives rub metaphorical egg off their faces over the mega-black out on July 12, officials in the strategy unit have their work cut out with Balkans bids. Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia's (FYROM) Macedonian Power Company (ESM) is just one of a host of targets on the electricity giant's shopping list.
PPC is keen to enter the tender for ESM, Zlatko Cherepnalkoski, Macedonian team leader at Meinl Bank Consortium, told the Athens News in an exclusive interview. Meinl is advising the FYROM government.
ESM is state-controlled and its restructuring is well underway, Cherepnalkoski said. The distribution division will become a subsidiary of the power-generation company. Both are slated for privatisation in early 2005. "We expect to open prequalification in the first quarter of 2005 and the government would like the whole thing wound up by the final quarter of 2005," he said.
Competition comes from the Czech Republic's CEZ, Italy's Enel, Spain's Endesa, and Iberdrola, Cherepnalkoski said. Germany's E. On and RWE are also eyeing the buy, and a third German player, ENBW, was interested in the past and is expected to be again, he went on to say. European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has put up 45 million euros as part of the reorganisation process. It is understood this will be transferred into shares once the privatisation takes place.
PPC also wants to get a strong foothold in Romania. PPC sources have said that the Greek incumbent is mulling over three Romania electrical power plants: Rovinari, Tourceni and Kraiva. Romania has 'ten bidders interested in thermanl generation complex Tourceni", Georgia Molosaga, Romania's secretary of state at the ministry of finance and commerce, told the Athens News at a recent conference in Belgrade. In an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the event, she added that Deloitte and Touche had been appointed as consultants for the sale, and that it is at the most advanced stage of three separate thermal generation tenders.
Rovinari wil be the next to be launched and already nine companies have submitted letters of interest, she said. A consultant will be appointed in the middle of this month. KPMG, BNP Paribas and Greece's Global Finance are among the names on the adviser long list. Craiova will be the last of the threee to be sold and has five interested parties, she noted. A consultant will be appointed at the end of July or in August. PPC's Italian peer Enel is also interested in the plant, as is US' AES Corporation and another US firm, Bechtel. More energy firms are in the pipeline for privatisation, sources say, and PPC is keeping a close watch.
Meanwhile, the government of Bulgaria has rejected the bids from the Greek power giant for three of the sets of electricity distribution companies (EDCs). A PPC official confirmed this to the Athens News but said he was not a liberty to say whether the bid had been rejected only on price. E. On has been selected for EDC group covering Northeast Bulgaria with a bid of 140 million euros.
CEZ has got Western Bulgaria for some 282 million euros, according to local media reports, whilst PPC had hoped for the southern region, but it went to Austria's EVN for 271 million euros. Greece is hoping it will be more successful with other regional bids, particularly as PPC's growth possibilities are shrinking on the home front as liberalisation slowly but inexorably moves forward.