The name is a creation of the words unique and performance. But the energy company Uniper is currently a long way from both. The second largest German company (after Volkswagen), with annual sales of 164 billion euros, urgently needs state aid to survive, and the rescue package should be in place by Monday next week at the latest. The lack of gas deliveries from Russia put the people of Düsseldorf in great distress. In order to meet their delivery obligations, they now have to procure expensive gas from other sources, which leads to high losses.
At the end of the week before last, Uniper had already applied for state aid. Now the federal government wants to save the company with a federal stake worth billions and at the same time make it possible for higher purchase prices for gas to be passed on directly to customers, i.e. to municipal utilities and commercial enterprises. The gas deliveries would be noticeably more expensive for them, and they would then probably pass them on to the end consumers. According to estimates, the entire government aid package could be up to ten billion euros.
The Ministry of Economics informed the Bundestag Committee for Climate Protection and Energy about the plans before a meeting on Wednesday. “To cover the accumulated losses, a combination of a capital increase with a target federal participation of 30 percent in Uniper and further hybrid equity is planned,” says a paper from which Reuters, among others, quotes. Final decisions are therefore still pending. These support measures for Uniper are “under review/negotiation”. 30 percent would be a blocking minority of the state.
The state-owned KfW should also give significantly more loans
In the corona pandemic, the federal government had already taken a stake in the ailing airline Lufthansa two years ago, a large part of the aid has already been repaid, and the block of shares is to be sold by 2023. According to the information provided by the committee, the public development bank KfW is to increase its credit line for Uniper from two to eight billion euros at the same time, since the company has already exhausted the previous credit line. Uniper shares, which had recently fallen sharply, rose by up to 20 percent on Wednesday due to the prospect of a rescue.
Marcus Schenck, here at a Deutsche Bank general meeting, is to advise the federal government.
(Photo: Malte Ossowski/imago/Sven Simon)
The Fortum Group, which in turn is backed by the Finnish state, has a stake of almost 80 percent in Uniper. Fortum had previously denied any involvement in the rescue efforts. The federal government is apparently being advised by Marcus Schenck in the rescue negotiations, the former partner of the investment bank Goldman Sachs was, among other things, CFO at Eon and Deutsche Bank.
Uniper was spun off from the Eon Group in 2016 as a kind of bad bank in which all activities that were not part of Eon’s green future were bundled. The federal government’s participation in Uniper is to be achieved through a combination of a capital increase and other so-called hybrid equity, for example loans that can be converted into shares. The aim is to cover the accumulated losses of the Düsseldorf group. The company’s top employee representative has already warned that Uniper could become insolvent “within days”.