Should a domestic offer be made for Caruna? – Ahead would be a challenge of billions of euros

The Spanish energy giant Iberdrola said late Tuesday evening that it plans to buy an 80 percent majority stake in Finland’s largest electricity grid company From Caruna with two billion euros. Caruna’s debt-free value would be around five billion euros.

The sellers are a US venture capitalist KKR and a Canadian pension company Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

The deal immediately woke up the center, whose chairman Antti Kaikkonen requires Petteri Orpon (kok) the government should take quick steps to find out the willingness of domestic investors to buy Caruna.

Of course, the same demand could also have been made in the winter of 2021, when Caruna’s ownership changed last time. Then the center was involved Hello Marine (sd) in the board and Mika Lintilä (central) as minister of economy.

However, Kaikkonen’s performance is interesting. Caruna’s situation has been wringing its hands ever since Fortum sold the electricity network business to private equity investors in December 2013 for around 2.55 billion euros.

Questions rained down. Why was it sold abroad? Why was everything sold at once, and not split up the online operation into parts, when the price obtained could have been better?

For example, then Kerava Energy the chairman of the board, ex-MP of the coalition Eero Lehti criticize Jyrki from Katai (kok) because the sale of the electricity network in pieces was not even required to be investigated, even though the local electricity companies were interested in them. The newspaper estimates that this was a 500 million euro mistake on the part of Fortum and the state.

Should the state or, more precisely, say Solidium make a competing bid for Caruna? However, the price would then not be the same as Iberdrola’s offer, but there would be a price competition ahead. That’s hardly what Kaikkonen wants.

Like Kaikkonen, the domestic owner could be thought of as pension companies, which are already familiar with network companies. About companies How much continues as the owner of Caruna, while Spring already gave it up five years ago. State Pension Fund on the other hand, is involved in Finland’s second largest network company in Elenia. About that again Ilmarinen already gave up about eight years ago.

This spring, Ilmarinen has also given up on the online giant Fingrid’s ownership, in which the state increased its ownership.

The sale of Fortum’s electricity transmission networks to foreign investors may have been a mistake, but correcting the mistake more than ten years later is shouting into the wind. Under no circumstances should government money be used for that. Domestic operators also have the same profit requirements for the owner.

It is clear that Caruna’s change of ownership will not change the supervision of the Energy Agency, nor the status of the company’s more than 700,000 customers from the current one.

As an owner, the Spanish energy giant may actually be a better option for Caruna than a private equity investor. For an industrial operator in the same industry, profit alone is just one interest among others.