E.ON’s innogy takeover bid to compete with telecom heavyweights – analysis

The unexpected deal between Germany’s two largest utilities E.ON and RWE to divide RWE’s spin-off innogy between them and focus on two different fields of the energy industry in the future is more than a mere reshuffling of Germany’s power market, Angela Hennersdorf, Andreas Mach, Sven Prange and Jürgen Berke write in the business weekly WirtschaftsWoche. E.ON CEO Johannes Teyssen “is putting billions into the expansion of digital grids to compete with online giants like Google, Telekom and others,” they say. E.ON will no longer be a power producer but instead wants to become “the spider in the Energiewende’s web,” the authors write. Grids are at the heart of Teyssen’s plan, they say, adding that millions of electric cars soon on Europe’s roads will make the grid business even more important in the future. But according to Teyssen, grids for data transfer and for electricity are going to “merge” in the near future, which is why E.ON wants to “make the grid a platform for new digital businesses,” facilitated by the introduction of smart meters.

Read the article in German here (paywall).

See the CLEW factsheet Germany’s largest utilities at a glance for more information.