Utilities
The utilities sector belongs to Rothschild's core advisory activities. We have a global team of more than 50 bankers at our disposal specialising in this sector. The cornerstone of our experience in this area is our advisory services in restructuring and privatisation of the complete utilities sector in the UK. As an adviser on the privatisation of British Gas, the privatisation of 12 regional electricity suppliers and the privatisation of 10 water and waste water companies, Rothschild has been involved in the restructuring of the whole utilities branch. Since 1990, we have been active worldwide on more than 200 utilities transactions, among others also on several of the largest transactions, for example, the € 103.7 bn merger of Suez and Gaz de France, the governance restructuring of Royal Dutch and Shell ($ 186 bn), the recommended sale of British Energy to EdF for £12.5 bn, the acquisition of KeySpan Corporation for US$ 11.8 bn by National Grid or the acquisition of Powergen by E.ON (€ 9.6 bn). Due to our numerous advisory projects for the leading global utilities companies we are very well acquainted with their goals, processes and decision-makers.
Rothschild has been active as an adviser in Germany since liberalisation of the utilities sector began. The first significant transaction that we advised on was for the City of Frankfurt on its merger of the utilities activities of its municipal utility companies (Stadtwerke) with Maingas AG to form Mainova in 1998. During the past five years Rothschild has been active in more than 20 transactions in the German utilities sector. The German utilities team in Frankfurt consists of 6 bankers.
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